Precarious Youth in Contemporary Graphic Narratives: Young Lives in Crisis 9781032123592, 9781032126739, 9781003225669

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Routledge Advances in Comics Studies

PRECARIOUS YOUTH IN CONTEMPORARY GRAPHIC NARRATIVES YOUNG LIVES IN CRISIS Edited by María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches

Precarious Youth in Contemporary Graphic Narratives

This volume explores comics as examples of moral outrage in the face of a reality in which precariousness has become an inherent part of young lives. Taking a thematic approach, the chapters devote attention to the expression and representation of precarious subjectivities, as well as to the economic and professional precarity that characterizes comics creation and production. An international team of authors, young and senior systematically examines the representation of precarious youth in graphic fiction and autobiographic comics, superheroes and precarity, market issues and spaces of activism and vulnerability. With this structure, the book offers a global perspective and comprehensive coverage of different aspects of a complex and multifaceted field of knowledge, with a special attention to minorities and liminal subjects. The comics analyzed function as examples of “ethical solicitation” that bear witness of the precarious existence younger generations endure, while at the same time creating images that voice their outrage and might move readers to act. This timely and truly interdisciplinary volume will appeal to comics scholars and researchers in the areas of media and cultural studies, modern languages, education, art and design, communication studies, sociology, medical humanities and more. María Porras Sánchez is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English Studies, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. Her main research areas are graphic narratives, cultural translation, and postcolonial and transnational literatures in English language. Gerardo Vilches holds a PhD in Contemporary History at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain, and has completed a doctoral thesis on the politics of the Spanish Transition in the satirical press. He also teaches History at Universidad Europea, Madrid, Spain.

Routledge Advances in Comics Studies Edited by Randy Duncan, Henderson State University Matthew J. Smith, Radford University

Contexts of Violence in Comics Edited by Ian Hague, Ian Horton and Nina Mickwitz Representing Acts of Violence in Comics Edited by Nina Mickwitz, Ian Hague and Ian Horton Performativity, Cultural Construction, and the Graphic Narrative Edited by Leigh Anne Howard and Susanna Hoeness-Krupsaw Immigrants and Comics Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis Edited by Nhora Lucía Serrano Superheroes and Excess A Philosophical Adventure Edited by Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books Red Ink in the Gutter Edited by John Darowski and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns Vertigo Comics British Creators, US Editors, and the Making of a Transformational Imprint Isabelle Licari-Guillaume Precarious Youth in Contemporary Graphic Narratives Young Lives in Crisis Edited by María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Advances-in-Comics-Studies/book-series/R ACS

Precarious Youth in Contemporary Graphic Narratives Young Lives in Crisis

Edited by María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches; individual chapters, the contributors The right of María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent reprints. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-032-12359-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-12673-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-22566-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669 Typeset in Galliard by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

In memoriam Óscar Gual Boronat (1973–2022)

Contents

List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Graphic Narratives and the Precarious Condition

x xii xviii 1

MARÍA PORRAS SÁNCHEZ AND GERARDO VILCHES

PART I

Representations of Precarious Youth in Graphic Fiction 1 The Ideological Depiction of Childhood during the Great Depression: From Little Orphan Annie to Little Lefty

19

FRANCISCO SAEZ DE ADANA

2 Oppressive Structures and Childhood Precarity in The Witches: A Graphic Novel

31

MARÍA AUGUSTA ALBUJA AGUILAR

3 Journey to Adulthood: Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Inio Asano’s Goodnight Punpun

45

JOSÉ ANDRÉS SANTIAGO

4 “A Malaise That We Don’t Know What to Name”: Cruel Optimism and Residual Disenchantment in Nadar’s El mundo a tus pies (2015)

60

KATIE SALMON

5 What Is Love?: Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves in the Works of Italian Women Graphic Novelists NICOLETTA MANDOLINI AND GIORGIO BUSI RIZZI

73

viii  Contents PART II

The Young Self in Crisis in (Auto)Biographic Comics 6 Uncertain Homes: Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies from the “Children’s Homes” in the Czech Republic

91

ANDREA HOFF

7 Finding Voice within the Objects of Their Lives: Adolescents Writing Memoir Comics to Interrogate Crisis 

107

MICHAEL L. KERSULOV

PART III

Superheroic Precarity 8 Super-Precariat: Socioeconomic Fictions and Realities of Superhero Comic Books

125

ELISA MCCAUSLAND AND DIEGO SALGADO

9 “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?”: Super Villains of African Descent in Classic Marvel Era

137

ÓSCAR GUAL BORONAT AND MARIO MILLANES VAQUERO

PART IV

Surviving in a Precarious Market: Labour Insecurity and the Publishing Sector 10 Precarious Identity: Labelling Oneself Fumettista?

151

LISA MAYA QUAIANNI MANUZZATO AND EVA VAN DE WIELE

11 Amazing Ultradeformer Cartoonist from Ituzaingó: The Memes of Pedro Mancini

165

AMADEO GANDOLFO

12 In Conversation with Vincent Giard: A Decade Taking Care of a Little Colossus ENRIQUE BORDES

178

Contents ix PART V

Spaces of Vulnerability/Spaces of Action 13 Crises, New Modalities of Social Struggle and the Emergence of LGBTIQ+ Discourses as Revulsive and Autonomous Responses in the Field of Argentine Comics (2016–2020)

199

LAURA CRISTINA FERNÁNDEZ

14 Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream)

211

JULIA C. GÓMEZ SÁEZ

15 Wasted Potential, Disposable Bodies: The Many Victims of Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer

227

MONICA CHIU

16 Strike Comics: Representing the Inequities and Absurdities of Academic Precarity

240

LYDIA WYSOCKI

Index

257

Figures

1.1 Little Orphan Annie daily strip, November 8, 1932. Source: Gray Harold. 2009. Little Orphan Annie vol. 4: A House Divided. San Diego: IDW Publishing22 1.2 Little Lefty daily strip, October 8, 1934. Source: Del Bourgo, Maurice, October 8, 1934. The Daily Worker.24 1.3 Little Lefty daily strip, August 5, 1937. Source: Del Bourgo, Maurice, August 5, 1937. The Daily Worker.27 2.1 The Grand High Witch as Tyrant (Bagieu 2020, 120). Source: From The Witches: The Graphic Novel. New York: Scholastic34 2.2 Boy transformed into a mouse (Bagieu 2020, 158). Source: From The Witches: The Graphic Novel. New York: Scholastic36 2.3 The mouse-boy and girl discuss the plan with Grandma (Bagieu 2020, 189). Source: From The Witches: The Graphic Novel. New York: Scholastic.39 3.1 Punpun’s cartoonish design at different stages in the series. © 2007 INIO ASANO/SHOGAKUKAN.54 3.2 Punpun’s categorization according to McCloud’s chart on pictorial vocabulary of comics.56 5.1 La giusta mezura. Copyright: Flavia Biondi, Bao Publishing (2017, 41).78 5.2 Non so chi sei. Copyright: Cristina Portolano, Rizzoli Lizard (2017, 195).81 5.3 Ti chiamo domani. Copyright: Rita Petruccioli, Bao Publishing (2019, 1, 51).82 6.1 Stronger Than Some, pp. 18–19. Source: Illustrated by Marek Pokorný. Ašta Šmé, 2016.97 6.2 Stronger Than Some, pp. 28–29. Source: Illustrated by Marek Pokorný. Ašta Šmé, 2016.98 6.3 Stronger Than Some, pp. 16–17. Source: Illustrated by Marek Pokorný. Ašta Šmé, 2016.100 6.4 Don’t Be a Gadjo!, pp. 12–13. Source: Illustrated by Františka Loubat, Ašta Šmé, 2016.102 7.1 Laura’s comic, page 1.111

Figures xi 7.2 7.3 7.4 10.1

10.2

10.3 11.1 11.2 11.3 12.1

12.2

12.3

14.1 14.2 14.3 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5

Laura’s comic, page 2.113 Abby’s comic.114 Derick’s comic.117 Excerpt from the comic book Suomi, published online between 2014 and 2017, later self-printed by Laura “La Came” Camelli with Associazione Culturale Mammaiuto. The work is a graphic journal of the artist’s journey in Finland.153 “Television is dead. Would you ever have said that? We were parked there for years. It raised us. It educated us. And when it died, we were at computer. What immoral children.” Excerpt from the first generational graphic novel realized by Nova, Stelle o sparo (Bao Publishing, 2018). Source: Stelle o sparo © 2018 Alessandra De Santis/BAO Publishing.156 “There is nothing to do.” Source: Excerpt from Malibu by Eliana Albertini (BeccoGiallo, 2019).159 Mancini shows his audience what is necessary to become like him.168 The cartoonist’s life remains mostly the same in Buenos Aires or Paris.169 The myth and reality of “spectration.”172 Two spreads from the zine Fonte n. 10 (2012) by Vincent Giard. They connect to, in Giard’s words, “a disastrous artist residency in Angouleme, and refer to drawings by Nicolas Lachapelle and Zviane” (Original in colour).180 Giard’s illustration for the exhibition “Cartoonists’ influences around the magazine Vestibulles.” In Giard’s words: “everyone did fan-art of classic American and Franco-Belgian series, but I just drew the gang at those first workshops” (Giard, interview).186 Giard’s illustrations for the exhibition The Montrealer (2017), an homage to The New Yorker organized by the association MNR Projet (lemontrealer.com). Giard chose to reconnect with the Printemps érable for the occasion (original in colour).193 Omar’s separation from her aunt. Source: Kleist (2016, 67).216 The Mogadishu stadium as a representation of Somalia history. Source: Kleist (2016, 39).219 Return to the Libyan coast. Source: Kleist (2016, 108–109).221 Day 3, 2019.241 Day 5, 2018.248 Day 9, 2018.249 Day 3, 2019.252 Day 11, 2020.253

Contributors

María Augusta Albuja Aguilar is a PhD candidate at Universidad Complutense de Madrid Literary Studies program. Her research interests are childhood and youth studies, Anglo-American 20th and 21st-century children’s, YA and crossover literature, and their adaptations to comics and graphic novels. Her dissertation project is dedicated to the works of J. D. Salinger and Roald Dahl. Her country of origin is Ecuador. Enrique Bordes holds a PhD in architecture. He lectures at ETSAM School of Architecture (Polytechnic University of Madrid), Spain. His professional areas are museography, edition and curation, with a special interest on the photographic and graphics narration of architecture and the city. In 2017, he published the book Cómic, Arquitectura Narrativa (Cátedra), which served as the basis for the exhibition Beatos, mecachis y percebes, miles de años de tebeos at the Spanish National Library (2018). His latest work, in collaboration with architect Luis de Sobrón, is a mapping of the destruction of the first modern bombing in history: Madrid bombardeado. 1936–1939, cartografía de la destrucción (Cátedra, 2021). Giorgio Busi Rizzi is a BOF post-doctoral fellow at Ghent University (Belgium), with the project “Experimental Digital Comics: Forms and Functions.” He holds a PhD in literary and cultural studies with a joint supervision by the Universities of Bologna and Leuven; his research, focusing on nostalgia in graphic novels, is currently being submitted for publication. He is the co-founder of the first research group on Italian comics (SnIF—Studying ‘n’ Investigating Fumetti). Monica Chiu is a Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, U.S.A. Her latest edited collection is Drawing New Color Lines: Transnational Asian American Graphic Narratives (2015). Her work on graphic narratives appears in Eds. Oga and Nagaik’s Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond (2019); Eds. Cutter and Schlund-Vials’ Redrawing the Historical Past (2018) and several journals. With Jeanette Roan, she authored “Asian American Graphic Narratives,” for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature and Culture (2019). She is currently at work on a

Contributors xiii monograph: “Show Me Where It Hurts: Drawing Embodiment in Graphic Pathographies.” Laura Cristina Fernández (Mendoza, 1980) PhD in Social Sciences, MA in Latin American Art, Senior Lecturer in the Seminar for Bachelor of Arts, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Cuyo (UNCUYO), Argentina. In the last decade, she earned doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships from CONICET (National Council of Scientific and Technical Research) related to Argentine comics, recent memory and crisis. She also participated as an advanced researcher in the UK and Spain (Marie Sklodowska Curie RISE— Horizon 2020) and in a considerable number of research projects in the University of Buenos Aires, Córdoba National University and UNCUYO, where she co-directed the research project “Revulsive Practices and Experiences in Arts and Politics in Mendoza. Gender Demands and Self-Managed Projects” (2019- 2021). She is currently Senior Lecturer in the Seminar for Bachelor of Arts in UNCUYO. As a comic artist, her most recent graphic novels are “Turba. Memorias de Malvinas” ( Ed. Hotel de las Ideas, Argentina, 2022) and “Ruptures. Les bébés volés du Franquisme” / “Rupturas” (Ed. Bang, France and Spain, 2022). Amadeo Gandolfo (San Miguel de Tucumán, 1984) holds a history degree from the National University of Tucumán, Argentina, and a PhD in social sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He completed his PhD thanks to a doctoral grant awarded by CONICET (National Council of Scientific and Technical Research) and was also a postdoctoral grant holder in said institution. He was also granted postdoctoral scholarships by the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin in 2019 and he is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, since 2020. He was part of the organizing committee for the International Conference on Comics and Graphic Humor “Viñetas Serias,” on its 2014 edition. He curated several comics exhibitions in the city of Buenos Aires. He edited Kamandi, an online magazine of comics criticism (www.revistakamandi.com) alongside Pablo Turnes. Julia C. Gómez Sáez is an Assistant Lecturer at the Translation and Interpreting Department at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and has been working as a freelance translator of English, French and German for almost two decades. In 2015, she finished a master’s degree in Linguistics and Language Science with a dissertation on the visual language of Asterix, a subject about which she has delivered various lectures and workshops over the past years. She is interested in the study of language and translation dynamics in comics. Óscar Gual Boronat Óscar Gual Boronat (1973-2022), PhD in history and Master’s degree in cultural activities. He was an Associate Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Valencia (Spain) and a professional librarian. He was a regular contributor to specialized media such as CuCo, Cuadernos de Cómic or 13 Millones de Naves. He always showed an unremitting interest in comic books and graphic novels as a historical source.

xiv  Contributors Andrea Hoff is a multimedia artist, writer and educator. Her doctoral research in language and literacy education at the University of British Columbia (Canada) employs arts-based research methods to explore the craft of comics as a primary way of understanding and examining young people’s speculations and attitudes about the future. Enriched through interdisciplinary scholarship reaching across the fields of multimodal literacy, media, writing and visual art, her work integrates theories of youth empowerment and speculative design within the creation of graphic narratives set in distant and notso-distant future worlds. Michael L. Kersulov teaches English Language Arts at Platteview High School in Springfield, Nebraska, U.S.A. He earned his BSE and MA in English literature at the University of Central Missouri, U.S.A., and his PhD in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, U.S.A. His research interests focus on comics pedagogy, multiliteracies and visual literacy. His writing emphasizes the benefits of multimodal texts to teach composition and rhetoric. He also frequently works with students to create their own memoir comics as a means of investigating identity, social concerns and cultural power. Nicoletta Mandolini is FCT researcher at CECS - Universidade do Minho (Portugal), where she is working at the project Sketch That Story and Make It Popular: Using Graphic Narratives in Lusophone and Italian Feminist Activism against Gender Violence. She worked as FWO Postdoctoral Researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium), and she owns a PhD from University College Cork (Ireland). Funded by the Irish Research Council, her doctorate project focused on the representation of gender-based violence and feminicide in contemporary Italy. It resulted in the monograph Representations of Lethal GenderBased Violence in Italy Between Journalism and Literature: Femminicidio Narratives (Routledge, 2021). Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado. Elisa McCausland is a journalist, comics critic and researcher at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Diego Salgado is a movie critic and essayist. For over 15 years, they have approached the contexts, implications and potentialities of popular culture and its manifestations, especially on comics and cinema. Their work together includes the essays Supernovas: Una historia feminista de la ciencia ficción audiovisual (Errata naturae, 2019) and Sueños y Fábulas: Historia de Vertigo (ECC, 2021). They have been invited to academic seminars and they have also given informational lectures about mainstream culture with a focus on gender issues, fantasy and science fiction. They also lead Trincheras de la Cultura Pop, a project of cultural criticism promoted by the publishing house Consonni. Mario Millanes Vaquero is a PhD candidate in the Literary Studies Programme at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is writing his doctoral thesis

Contributors xv on identity conflicts in Langston Hughes’s work. He is deeply interested in researching African American literature and culture from its origins to the present. María Porras Sánchez is Assistant Professor at the Department of English Studies, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has formerly taught at Aberystwyth University, Wales, and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain. Her main research areas are graphic narratives and postcolonial and transnational literatures in English, with interest on precarity, migration and otherness. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Studies in Comics. She combines her teaching and research with her work as a literary translator. She has co-edited, with E. Sánchez-Pardo and R. Burillo, Women Poets and Myth in the 20th and 21st Centuries: On Sappho’s Website (2018). She has published the critical edition and translation into Spanish of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2018), by Mona Eltahawy. Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato has a master’s degree cum laude in Performing Arts, Cinema, and Multimedia Communications (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy) with a dissertation on History of Animation. She has written about Japanese animation in the books Animation: A World History (Routledge, 2015) and Animazione. Una storia globale (UTET, 2017), curated by Giannalberto Bendazzi. Later she extends her interests to Spanish comics, Italian comics, and self-publishing comics. She is Communications Manager at WOW Spazio Fumetto—Museo del Fumetto di Milano, where she has led exhibitions and events related to Japanese Culture and DIY comics. Maya is in the Management Committee of the Action iCOn-MICs about Iberian comics and a founding member of SnIF—Studying “n” Investigating Fumetti; she is in the Editorial Committee of Neuróptica. Estudios sobre el cómic, as well as collaborating to the Italian comics critic website Lo Spazio Bianco. Francisco Saez de Adana is Full Professor at University of Alcalá (Spain). He has a PhD in Communication from Pompeu Fabra University (Spain). His line of research is related to popular culture, focusing on American comics of the first half of the 20th century. In this field, he has published 10 book chapters as well as 15 papers in Spanish and international journals. He organized a seminar on Milton Caniff and American culture at the University of Salerno, Italy, and has given talks on comics at universities and institutions in countries such as Argentina, Chile, the UK or the U.S. Katie Salmon is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Iberian and Latin American Studies and Medical Humanities. She recently completed her PhD at Newcastle University, the UK, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership scheme. Her thesis examined the impact of societal crises on young people’s mental health as represented in contemporary Chilean and Spanish comics, film, and literature. Katie’s particular areas of interest include affect theory, visual and literary culture, (crisis of) neoliberalism, and the decolonization of mental health and

xvi  Contributors illness. Katie also holds an MLitt from Newcastle University, which explored notions of female disability and biopolitics in Spanish cinema and a BA in French and Spanish from Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. José Andrés Santiago (PhD) is a visual artist, postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Fine Arts Faculty (Universidade de Vigo, Spain), focused on expanded-field comics, manga and anime studies from a visual perspective. Former fellow of the Japan Foundation’s Japanese Studies Program and invited researcher at the Graduate School of Manga (Kyoto Seika University, Japan, 2014–2016). His doctoral thesis was revised into a book entitled Manga. Del cuadro flotante a la viñeta japonesa published by Comanegra in 2010. He is also co-editor of the volume Anime Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to Neon Genesis Evangelion (2021). This chapter is part of the R&D project PID2019-108898GA-I00, entitled “Transdisciplinary Comics Studies” and funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/. Eva Van de Wiele is a doctoral candidate at Ghent University (Belgium). Her research on serial strategies and adaptations of international comics in children’s comics magazines from Spain (TBO) and Italy (Corriere dei Piccoli) is part of the ERC project Children in Comics. She is mainly interested in comics from the beginning of the 20th century but also writes about contemporary comics online (9ekunst.nl, tebeosfera.es). She has taught on the representation of Holocaust in Comics at the Antwerp University Summer School on Children’s Literature 2019 and has presented papers at the international conferences. She has organized a Conference on Girlhood in Comics on which she is currently editing a volume for Leuven University Press with Dona Pursall. She has published in CuCo, Cuadernos de cómic, Tebeosfera. Eva is a Management Committee Member of the COST iCOnMiCs Action. She is also a member the 20cc research group ACME and of an early-career researchers group on Italian comics, SnIF. Some of its members have organized a Summer School on Italian comics “Ricerca a fumetti” at Ghent University (July 12–15, 2021). Gerardo Vilches holds a PhD in Contemporary History at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia and has completed a doctoral thesis on the politics of the Spanish Transition in the satirical press. He teaches History at Universidad Europea (Madrid). He is the author of Breve historia del cómic (Nowtilus, 2014), El guión de cómic (Diminuta, 2016) and La satírica transición. Revistas de humor político en España (1975–1982) (Marcial Pons, 2021). He has also edited Del BOOM al CRACK: la explosión del cómic adulto en España (1977– 1995) (Diminuta, 2018) and has collaborated on different edited collections. He has also participated in numerous international conferences on comics and history. He is co-director of CuCo, Cuadernos de Cómic, an academic journal on comics online. He combines his teaching and research with his role as a comics critic for different media and as a member of the board of ACDCómic (Spanish Association of Comics Critics). He was also a member of the organizing committee of the international conference Comics in Dialogue.

Contributors xvii Lydia Wysocki is an educational researcher at Newcastle University, using sociocultural theory to explore how what people read influences how they understand the social world. As a social scientist, her work is inherently interdisciplinary, currently split across her part-time PhD studies (funder: ESRC NEDTC/NINEDTP; working title: “British Comics, British Values”) and (precarious) employment as a Research Associate across multiple funded research projects. She founded and leads Applied Comics Etc, working with subject specialists and comics artist-writers to make comics that communicate specific information.

Acknowledgements

This book has been possible thanks to the hard work, generosity and insight of all the contributors participating in it. We will always be grateful to your enthusiastic and creative response to our call for chapters; your research is proof that precarity criss-crosses geographies, comics traditions and scholarly disciplines. We would always be indebted to Roberto Bartual and Julia C. Gómez for their invaluable feedback and suggestions regarding this project. We would like to thank Michiel Rys and the rest of the organizers of the conference The Poetics of Precarity. Literature, Art, and the Precarious Condition held at KU Leuven in December 2020 for their critical input regarding our ideas on precarity and graphic narratives. Many thanks to the students and colleagues participating in our teaching innovation project on ethics in graphic narratives at Universidad Complutense de Madrid: you are a constant source of inspiration. We are grateful to the academic editors of the Routledge Advances in Comics Studies Series, Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith, for their warm encouragement and valuable suggestions, and to our editors in Routledge, Suzanne Richardson and Tanushree Baijal, for their constant support and endless patience answering our queries. Editing this volume was a challenge but it was easier to meet, thanks to the love and support of our families and partners throughout the process. A heartfelt thank you for being at our side at all times. This book is dedicated to Óscar Gual Boronat, friend and colleague: it was a gift to know you.

Introduction Graphic Narratives and the Precarious Condition María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches

Precariousness, precarity and vulnerability The precarious condition is one of the most defining aspects of contemporary culture worldwide: social and individual vulnerability, objective and systemic violence, labour-based insecurity, and different forms of instability haunt a neoliberal world in crisis. According to Judith Butler (2004, 2009, 2012), precarity and precariousness, the two aspects of the precarious condition, are two forms of vulnerability. Since all human lives are vulnerable, subject to illness and death, precariousness is understood as an existential state of life, the recognition “that life requires various social and economic conditions to be met in order to be sustained as a life” (2009, 13). In this sense, it involves exposure—recognizing that one’s life is vulnerable—and dependence—which implies that “one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the other” (Butler 2009, 14). Thus, precariousness is the shared human condition that makes all individuals intrinsically interdependent in their vulnerability. This whole volume highlights precariousness as an existential vulnerability which manifests itself through different forms affecting young lives, as represented in graphic narratives from different contexts. Even if precariousness is a shared condition of human life, there are living bodies which are more vulnerable than others—following Butler’s terminology, there are lives that are more grievable than others. This happens because precariousness exists within certain political, economic, and social structures, which impact living bodies in different ways. While precariousness is an existential category, precarity is a more political notion, Butler notes (2009, 3). Therefore, precarity is a hierarchized form of precariousness since it can be differently distributed. As Butler explains: This differential distribution of precarity is at once a material and a perceptual issue, since those whose lives are not “regarded” as potentially grievable, and hence valuable, are made to bear the burden of starvation, underemployment, legal disenfranchisement, and differential exposure to violence and death. (Butler 2009, 25) DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-1

2  María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches Butler is evoking a two-fold dimension of precarity: its material aspect—how it is endured by people facing violence, discrimination, food insecurity, social and legal constraints and underemployment—and its representational aspect— how it is perceived and represented. This volume intends to address the two-fold dimension of precarity in graphic narratives: how it is addressed by authors who are affected by precarity, and how it represents precarity as endured by young individuals who are migrant, underemployed, underpaid, non-white or non-heteronormative subjects. The works of the authors analyzed in this volume, among many others, show the intersection of vulnerability, gender, race, sexual identity and precarity. In a neoliberal global context in which “capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable” (Fisher 2009, 8), precarity becomes a strategy of capitalist control that organizes “all forms of labour according to the infinite modalities of market flexibility” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 146). This happens also in places where the welfare state has been weakened. For authors such as Isabell Lorey (2015), precarity does not only apply to the labour market and the consequences of labour instability. She sees precarization as a governmental instrument in neoliberal societies and precarity as a mode of subjugation of neoliberal ideology (2015, 2–3). This way, we can consider precarity as a form of systemic violence as defined by Slavoj Žižek, as the ominous consequence of the functioning of political and economic systems, which often imply subtle forms of coercion that enable relations of exploitation and control (2008, 9). In this context, fragmented and weakened social structures lead to fragmented lives (Bauman 2007, 2–3). The individuals who populate the present historical condition of globalized capitalism are marked by the “unholy trinity” of uncertainty, insecurity, and unsafety that define “liquid modernity” (Bauman 2000, 181). As a counterpart, Bauman highlights, individuals become more flexible and adaptable (2007). But living under endemic uncertainty in increasingly competitive and unequal societies also has psychological effects since excessive tiredness, exhaustion, and neurological disorders such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline personality disorder and burnout syndrome are frequent in the pathological landscape of the 21st century (Han 2015). The present volume focuses on graphic narratives addressing fragmented factual or fictional lives marked by uncertainty, insecurity, unsafety, defencelessness and vulnerability.

Precariat and cognitariat: Youth deferring the good life Many of the authors and characters included in this volume who experience precarity are, in fact, members of a new class-in-the-making: the precariat (Standing 2011, 2014). For Standing, the precariat is divided into three groups which show internal confrontation: old working-class families or communities—or lowermiddle-class, in the United States—who look back with nostalgia to the security enjoyed by the previous generations in terms of pensions and employment security; migrants and ethnic minorities who are focused on survival, “ultimate denizens” whose rights are denied; educated and mostly young professionals

Introduction 3 who experience “relative deprivation by being denied a future, an attractive way of building a life of dignity and fulfilment,” but show progressive values and, unlike the first group, do not follow nationalist nor neo-fascist agendas (Standing 2014, 11). In its heterogeneity, the precariat consists of people without class or occupational identity, living on a low income, working as casuals or part-timers, and losing access to rights (Standing 2014, 10). It is a psychological condition affecting the citizens of developed and underdeveloped countries alike, crisscrossing the categories of class and geographical location (Standing 2011, 58–59). In addition, this last group integrated by the young precariat frequently overlaps with the cognitariat (Berardi, 2005). This social group, as defined by Franco “Bifo” Berardi, consists of cognitive labourers whose work is enabled by digital technologies. For Berardi, “the content of labour becomes mental, but at the same time the limits of productive work become uncertain” (2005, 58), so this contingency does not imply better conditions or better salaries. Some of the characters and several comic authors analyzed in this volume fit in these social and existential categories marked by long hours working in front of a computer, alienation, and uncertainty regarding the future. At the same time, work has become the most important part of their lives. In this generalized global context, precarity is the evidence of the end of the liveable time (Garcés 2017, 30). Remedios Zafra (2017) points at a paradox affecting young creative and academic professionals: their working conditions are unstable and precarious, but since they rely on their vocation or “enthusiasm,” they resort to self-exploitation to support themselves. By doing so, they keep afloat the productive apparatus that exploits their enthusiasm in a destructive vicious circle (Zafra 2017, 15–16; López Alós 2019, 63). But enthusiasm is not the only enabling mechanism of precarity enacted by those who are more affected by it. The “happiness duty” imposed on individuals in contemporary culture, as defined by Sara Ahmed (2010) functions as an additional burden for cognitarians. In contemporary culture, “happiness is often described as a path, as being what you get if you follow the right path” (Ahmed 2010, 9). Failure to walk this path is seen as a failure to aspire to a good life. In this context, individuals with a precarious existence might feel unaccomplished, alienated, self-exploited, and depressed, and yet blame themselves for not reaching happiness instead of blaming the systemic violence enacted by neoliberal governments, which use precarity as a strategy of control and exploitation. This is the beginning of a life permanently postponed (Zafra 2017, 15), in which happiness functions as a social promise (Ahmed 2010, 32). Lauren Berlant’s notion of “cruel optimism” echoes Ahmed’s deferred promise of happiness. For Berlant, a relation of cruel optimism emerges “when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing” (2011, 1). Berlant refers to the fantasy of the good life, which becomes cruel when it adds an additional burden to daily hardships. This cruel fantasy of a good life is reflected in many of the comics studied in the volume; characters dream up of better salaries and jobs, meaningful relationships, decent housing, and security, but they have to negotiate with their present as they realize their prospects of a good life may

4  María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches never materialize. All these comics are part of a recent aesthetic trend, a precarious mode encompassing different cultural manifestations: New aesthetic forms […] emerge during the 1990s to register a shift in how the older state-liberal-capitalist fantasies shape adjustments to the structural pressures of crisis and loss that are wearing out the power of the good life’s traditional fantasy bribe without wearing out the need for a good life. (Berlant 2011, 7) Even if graphic narratives have traditionally approached young lives in crisis to show their vulnerability, precarity in its different dimensions has emerged as a powerful motif and central theme in the different comics traditions in the last decades, coinciding with this shift of the previous liberal-capitalist fantasies. Several chapters in this volume show that this interest for precarity has coalesced in recent comics worldwide.

Ethical possibilities of shared precariousness It seems that contemporary culture has lost faith in the regenerative possibilities of utopia to such an extent that imagining an alternative to capitalism has become impossible (Fisher 2009; Bauman 2017; Berardi 2017). But even if precariousness and precarity are the aftereffects of an exploitative neoliberal world, their representation does not offer a nostalgic picture of an old-world order. For some authors, there is a sense of loss in contrast with their previous generation—the loss of a good life—but even in those cases, the past is not romanticized. That is why these representations do not conform to a retrotopia of an ideal/idealized past (Bauman 2017). As Rys points out: “representations of precarity are certainly no simple reflections of a pre-existing social world, as they also present new forms of agency and new tools to reimagine or contest what is perceived as an unjust distribution of risk and insecurity across different groups in society” (2021, 5). What do graphic narratives about precariousness and precarity offer, if not a reimagined future nor a romanticized past? They confront their radical present not as a nostalgic recreation but as an acknowledgement of their existential precariousness as affected by different forms of precarity. By doing so, they invite the reader through the “collaborative nature of the form” (Polak 2017, 3) to share and re-live those experiences, to partake of their precarious condition. This is possible because: The formal qualities of graphic narratives—including the gutter, the staging of point of view, and the textual-imagistic hybridity—make them uniquely suited to questions relating to how we negotiate representations of extremity because their staging of the gaze and their staging of questions surrounding both how and what we remember prompts readers to consider their emotional and ethical relationships to the text. (Polak 2017, 2)

Introduction 5 This collaborative nature carries an implicit ethical approach, a “turn to ethics” that occupies a prominent position in criticism, literary studies and comics studies (Eaglestone 2010, 581; Romero-Jódar 2017, 20). As Hillary Chute states, “comics proposes an ethics of looking and reading intent on defamiliarizing standard or received images of history while yet aiming at communicate and circulate” (2016, 31). Eszter Szép (2020) extends this ethical relationship between readers and authors to the representation of bodily vulnerability. She understands this relationship as a “bodily performance enabled by the experience and embodied understanding of vulnerability as articulated in the comic being read” (Szép 2020, 18). Through this double strategy—defamiliarization and communication—vulnerability becomes acknowledged, represented and therefore, shared. The experience recounted by these authors takes a wider stance; their precariousness and their encounter with precarity might be a singular experience, but it becomes part of a “common growl,” as defined by Jean-Luc Nancy: “It means to grunt, bellow, and roar. It means to yell together, to murmur, mumble, grouse, become indignant, protest, become enraged together. One tends to grumble alone, but people growl in common. The common growl is a subterranean torrent” (2016, ix). In this sense, the “common growl” of the precarious youth becomes productive, a regenerative source of identification, as described by Thomas Claviez (2016, 3): A “poetics of community” might offer us alternative and innovative views on newly emerging forms of community that cannot be read productively anymore against either the backdrop of older concepts of community colored by a romantic nostalgia for homogeneity, closeness, and sameness […] or the myth of rational choice. With this project, we do not intend to hail comics as a means of social denunciation since comics are autonomous and individual creations and any efforts to delimitate works of art by giving them a social function would be doomed (Adorno 1997, 1–2). Rather, we would like to present them as examples of moral outrage in the face of a reality in which, according to Butler, “no one escapes the precarious dimension of social life” (2012, 148). The comics analyzed in the volume function as examples of “ethical solicitation” (Butler 2012, 135) that bear witness of the precarious existence younger generations endure while at the same time creating images that voice their outrage and might move readers to actively engage in a poetics of precarious community. By doing so, they might contribute to the “emancipation of knowledge from capital accumulation” to expand the horizon of possibility in the future (Berardi 2017, 312). Acknowledging vulnerability also opens up an interesting possibility since “recognition wields the power to reconstitute vulnerability” (Butler 2004, 43). With Gambetti and Sabsay, Butler expands this notion to vulnerability in resistance (Butler, Gambetti and Sabsay, 2016). Hence recognition becomes a form of empowerment. This is an alternative framing for representation and

6  María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches self-representation: “In order to provide an alternative […] we ask what in our analytic and political frameworks would change if vulnerability were imagined as one of the conditions of the very possibility of resistance” (Butler, Gambetti and Sabsay 2016, 1). By acknowledging their own vulnerability, these creators activate a mechanism of resistance. The closing remarks of Hessel’s manifesto “Indignez-Vous!”—“TO CREATE IS TO RESIST. TO RESIST IS TO CREATE” (2011, 19)—highlight how the performative powers of both resistance and creation palliate the effects of the social, political and identity crisis inherent to liquid modernity.

Precarious authors and comics representing precarity Graphic narratives seem to be a propitious medium to represent precarity in the context of postmodernity in general and liquid modernity in particular. Since they have been part of lowbrow culture during most of their existence, comics have always demonstrated a significant capacity of adaptation for surviving the market crises, and they have found new ways of reinventing themselves, becoming a more legitimized art in the last decades by creating new genres and approaching different themes and audiences. Moreover, the double verbal and iconic articulation of comics language—impossible to split (Varillas 2009, 57)— allows artists to represent reality in a specific way, using creative strategies that differ from cinema, literature and other media. Many authors have pointed out that the nature of comics is particularly well-suited to deal with self-narratives and abstract concepts (Whitlock 2006; El Refaie 2012; Chute 2016; Mickwitz 2016; Ahmed and Crucifix 2018, among others); according to Hillary Chute, comics language is especially fitting to address trauma and memory, because of its use of a complex grammar of gutters and panels which controls linearity and chronology (Chute 2016, 4). For Chute: “Comics make a reader access the unfolding of evidence in the movement of its basic grammar, by aggregating and accumulating frames of information” (2016, 2). Precarity and precariousness are related to graphic narratives through a triple dimension: formal, authorial, and thematic. Formal, because comics artists have frequently used zines and self-publishing in general for a variety of reasons, ranging from the lack of a professional space to publish their experimental or controversial works to having a political position against the capitalist market and neoliberalism. Working in the margins of the professional comics market often involves not getting a fair payment or at least depending on self-exploitation to get profits. However, this space can also be a site of empowerment and agency; as Galaxina notes, zines generate new spaces, giving prominence to voices which manifest the interests of communities located in the margins of society and culture; they are keen on experimenting with new identities, political vocabularies and emotions disregarded by dominant society (2017, 14). In the authorial dimension, more often than not comics authors have endured economic precarity because the traditional comics industry established unfair and abusive working conditions. Initially, big American publishers held

Introduction 7 copyright and corporate ownership (Duncan and Smith 2009, 91)—most of the artists were not allowed to sign their works until the 1950s—and the rates were low compared to other creative jobs. There are many well-documented cases of authors who sued their publishers to get royalties or just to recover their original pages. For instance, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of Superman, engaged in a long legal battle against DC Comics between 1969 and 1974, reclaiming the ownership of their character. In 1985, Jack Kirby filed a lawsuit to recover his original art from Marvel Comics. In Japan, the precarious working conditions of mangakas have always been notorious: they were forced to accept long working hours without weekly rest in order to keep a hard and excessive publishing pace. Nowadays, the salaries and working conditions in the comics industry are still precarious. The French BD, one of the leading comics markets, is a clear example; under the hashtag #AuteursEnColère, a collective of writers and cartoonists denounced that 41% of French authors were living below the poverty line (Bagieu et al. 2018). In secondary markets such as Germany, Italy, Spain, Chile or Argentina, the situation is even worse: most authors work part-time because they do not earn enough creating comics, so they work as illustrators, designers, or teachers, among other occupations. As part of mass culture, comics have historically represented precarity and poverty from a thematic point of view, frequently in association with young characters. American classic comic strips from the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s used to include stereotypes such as the hobo—Happy Hooligan (1900–1932) by Frederick Burr Opper, Pete the Tramp (1932–1963) by Clarence D. Russell—or the orphan—Little Orphan Annie (1924–2010) by Harold Gray. Even if some exceptions can be traced, in general terms, the representations of these precarious realities served comical purposes (Basso 2019). That was even the case of the leftist Spanish author Josep Escobar, who surreptitiously criticized Franco’s regime and recreated the precarious lives of ordinary people through his characters Zipi y Zape, Carpanta or Petra, though his critique was always a subtext underlying his humour. Even American superheroes can be approached from the perspective of precarity: in his first appearance in Action Comics no. 1 (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, April 1938), Superman fights gentrification and property speculation, corrupt politicians, and unscrupulous businessmen. In the 1960s, Marvel Comics raised a more complex social awareness with the appearance of The Amazing SpiderMan (Lee, Ditko et al. 1963–). Spider-Man’s alter ego, Peter Parker, is a teenage orphan who lives with his elderly uncle and aunt. He undergoes serious financial difficulties that force him to accept precarious jobs that he combines with his exploits as a masked adventurer. Also, the mutant characters from The X-Men (1963–), created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and widely developed by writer Chris Claremont and various artists during the 1970s and 1980s, are exposed to different forms of precarity. In addition, the series has been read as a metaphor against racism and discrimination (Parks and Hughey 2017). Fiction genres have enacted different critical approaches to capitalism and precarity. Whether commercial mainstream comic books or adult graphic novels,

8  María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches science-fiction, fantasy and other genres have always offered a space for social and political criticism, usually through different forms of allegory. This is the case of classics such as Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1982–1990), but we find a similar stance in recent U.S. comics—e.g., Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martín’s The Private Eye (2015) or Eleanor Davis’ The Hard Tomorrow (2019)—, in the Spanish graphic novels Puertadeluz (2017) by Luis Bustos and La auditora (2019) by Javier Peinado and Jon Bilbao, or in the French comic Soon (2019) by Thomas Cadène and Benjamin Adam. Anti-system tenets are recurrent in the long tradition of dystopias emphasizing the failures of neoliberalism and post-capitalism and focusing on its disastrous consequences for precarious lives.

Precariousness and precarity in non-fiction comics However, it was with the rise of adult comics that precarity began to be openly represented from a critical perspective. It is clear that precarious working conditions were connected to the narratives of precarity. For instance, the first adult comics movement, Japanese Gekiga (“dramatic drawing”), appeared in the precarious context of Osaka’s manga renting market in the late 1950s. The young authors who started Gekiga—Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Masahiko Matsumoto, Takao Saito, to name a few—were tired of making manga for children and began to introduce contemporary social issues in their works, firstly through noir plots and later through autobiography and autofiction. According to the Gekiga Manifesto (1959), the movement was explicitly oriented towards a young adult readership, and it involved teenage anger and social protest (Shamoon 2011, 28). In the United States, underground comix introduced an explicit social awareness in the 1960s. This was an eclectic movement supported by an enthusiastic, barely professional, and non-commercial publishing industry (Martínez-Pinna 2019, 16). In the countercultural context of San Francisco, while living under precarious conditions, authors such as Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Spain Rodríguez, Bill Griffith and others defined the bases of adult American comics, creating significant works with a great influence in the following generations of cartoonists. To a great extent, underground comix laid the foundations for Western non-fiction comics, a category which may include autobiography, autofiction, memoir, documentary, or essay, and which is directly connected to the representation of precarity. Thanks to underground comix, the comics medium revealed itself as being perfectly suitable for autobiography and related narratives because it established a particular relationship between author and their own body through its representation (El Refaie 2012, 4, 8), but it also built a “reader’s emotional engagement with the protagonist” (9). Therefore, comics become an instrument to understand and deal with trauma, abuse, and discrimination—a space where, thanks to its marginal status, authors can freely express themselves through self-representation. As Chute states, it is “a manner of testifying that sets a visual language in motion with and against the verbal in order to embody individual and collective experience, to put contingent selves and histories into form” (2010, 3).

Introduction 9 Moreover, underground cartoonists successfully introduced a variety of new themes in graphic narratives such as sex, drugs, extreme violence or psychedelia. In addition, some authors began to use their own experiences as source material. As their lives were characterized by bohemia and different forms of precarity, they were represented in most of the first autobiographical comics. According to El Refaie, the year 1972 marked an important milestone since the first autobiographical story by Robert Crumb, “The Confessions of R. Crumb,” and Justin Green’s first and only graphic novel, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, were published that year (2012, 37). Simultaneously, Aline Kominsky began to draw her first autobiographical short stories, and soon more women artists would follow her steps in magazines such as Wimmen’s Comix or Twisted Sister, founded by Kominsky with Diane Noomin. These seminal works would be the inspiration for a long tradition of women cartoonists such as Debbie Dreschler, Phoebe Gloeckner or Marjane Satrapi who deal with traumatic memories— even sexual abuse—although they “do not project an identity that is defined by trauma: they work to erase the inscription of women in that space” (Chute 2010, 2). However, precarity and precariousness often correspond to the realm of the ordinary and everyday life, not to the unusual, and therefore they cannot be considered exclusively traumatic (Berlant 2011, 10). Nevertheless, graphic narratives documenting precarity recreate lives as impacted by it, sometimes projecting an identity defined by precarity. After the first wave of underground comix, new generations of authors would use comics to expose their precarious realities as young cartoonists: following the steps of Aline Kominsky or Robert Crumb, we can find a variety of narratives about precariousness and crisis exhibiting intimate or ironical autobiographical stories—Eddie Campbell’s Alec (1978–2012), Joe Matt’s Peepshow (1992–), Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte (1991–1998)—in which the authors frequently recreated a penniless and jobless youth. Authors used humour as a way to deal with precarity and making fun of themselves, but there were also dramatic approaches, especially since the 2008 global crisis: the works of Italian Zerocalcare, Spanish Nadar or Polish Daria Bogdanska are excellent examples. Of course, autofiction has been also present in contemporary comics, as in other media, since the emergence of the postmodern paradigm: “it is impossible to draw strict boundaries between factual and fictional accounts of someone’s life, since memory is always incomplete and the fact of telling one’s life story necessarily involves selection and artful construction” (El Refaie 2012, 12). Moreover, there are authors who deliberately mix fictional and factual facts. Since the seminal Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (1971–1997), who used humour to portray the adventures of three young brothers submerged in the cannabis culture, comics such as Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For (1983–2008), Peter Bagge’s Hate (1990–1998), Simon Hanselmann’s Megg, Moog & Owl (2013–) or Mamen Moreu’s Desastre (2018) continued that tradition of autofictional works. Different collectives and minorities have also found a voice in comics in the last years,  exemplifying what Jack Halberstam calls the “queer alliance of the dispossessed and the precarious” (2018, 41). Homosexual identity and

10  María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches homophobia have been represented since the early work of some underground cartoonists such as Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby, 1995) or the French Fabrice Neaud (Journals, 1996–2002). Many LGBTIQ+ narratives underline the authors’ vulnerability and their continuous negotiation with a heteronormative context, such as Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006), Kabi Nagata’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness (2016), Tillie Walden’s Spinning (2017) or Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer (2019). Vulnerability and sexual identity are also at the centre of some trans narratives, such as Justine by Gauthier (2014) or P. La mia adolescenza trans (2019) by FumettiBrutti.1 The previous examples demonstrate that different approaches can coexist within the genre of autobiography, or, in Gillian Whitlock’s words, “autographics,” “to draw attention to the specific conjunctions of visual and verbal text in this genre of autobiography, and also to the subject positions that narrators negotiate in and through comic” (2006, 966). As García has pointed out, in fact, autobiography became the “antigenre,” in opposition to traditional genres such as superheroes narratives (2010, 190). This is crucial to understand how breaking the rules—both narrative and commercial—led the way to the development of a wide variety of non-fiction comics. Under the direct inspiration of Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary (García 2010, 156), Art Spiegelman recreated the lives of his parents during the Holocaust in Maus (1981–1992). Since then, Maus has become a milestone in non-fiction comics and a powerful influence on many artists, including Joe Sacco, the most relevant author of the so-called graphic journalism. Sacco always turns his attention to those who suffer the violence of war and the abuses of power, as it can be seen in Palestine (1993–1995), Safe Area Goražde (2000) or Paying the Land (2020). His influence can be traced in works such as Sarah Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria and Iraq (2016), Guillermo Abril and Carlos Spottorno’s La grieta (2016) or Nacha Vollenweider’s Fussnoten (2017), which address the specific precarity of migrants and refugees. The internationalization of the graphic novel—which goes beyond the local artistic contexts of the main markets and reaches countries without a previous tradition in comics (García 2010, 251, 253)—has allowed authors from all over the world to use comics to deal with their own precarious contexts in the last years, either through autobiography or other non-fictional genres. We can mention Israeli Rutu Modan (Exit Wounds, 2006), Chilean Marcela Trujillo “Maliki” (Ídolo, una historia casi real, 2017) or Hungarian Miriam Katin (We Are on Our Own, 2006).

The structure of the present volume As we have stated, contemporary comics constitute a space for younger generations to freely express themselves about their precarious present. Whether fictional or factual, all these graphic narratives deal with different forms of oppression, discrimination, and hardship through a wide variety of forms and styles. With the present volume, we follow the path of Iwata-Weickgenannt and Rosenbaum (2015) and Claesson (2019), who identify a new literary paradigm of

Introduction 11 precarity in contemporary narratives in Japan and Spain respectively, and Berlant (2011), who illustrates that precarity is a recurrent motif of contemporary culture. Our modest contribution herein means to expand this thesis to the field of comics studies, a task that no other book has undertaken so far. This collection brings together young and senior scholars from different cultural backgrounds, based in Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Italy and Belgium. Their sixteen contributions, which approach manga, European, Latin American, and U.S. comics, have been organized into five sections. With this structure, we expect to offer a global perspective and cover the different aspects of precariousness and precarity as complex and multifarious phenomena, with a special attention to minorities and liminal subjects. This approach reveals how vulnerability and precarity often intersect and overlap with gender, race or sexual identity. The first section, “Representations of precarious youth in graphic fiction,” covers fictional representations of precarious youth at different points in time and space through five chapters. In the first chapter, Francisco Saez de Adana illustrates how poverty has been associated with childhood since the early days of comic strips. He approaches the ideological projection of conservative and progressive ideals in two young characters: Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie and Little Lefty, an obscure strip from a left-wing newspaper. María Augusta Albuja Aguilar addresses the representation of oppressed children in the graphic adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches by Pénélope Bagieu (2020). Bagieu’s adaptation, she argues, accentuates the precarity as addressed in the source text, in which the witches stood for “an allegory of oppressive structures,” reinforcing the children’s vulnerability through her representation of race, gender, class, and age. The third, fourth and fifth chapters address fictional narratives by Japanese, Spanish and Italian authors showing young characters impacted by economic and existential crises. José Andrés Santiago analyzes from a formal perspective Goodnight Punpun by Inio Asano (2007–2013), deemed the “voice of his generation.” Asano illustrates the existential crisis of Japanese youth through the morphing character of Punpun, subverting the codes of the hero’s journey, so frequent in coming-of-age narratives, to underline his vulnerability and distress through his mutable graphic traits. Katie Salmon also examines the disillusionment of a whole generation in Nadar’s El mundo a tus pies (2015). As a result of the 2008 financial crisis and the lack of access to a “good life,” many young Spanish people were forced to migrate. Drawing from Berlant, Salmon argues that Nadar’s graphic resources emphasize the constant, devastating, yet ordinary crisis through the visual representation of commonplace onomatopoeia, everyday objects, or real iconography. Salmon notes that even if Nadar’s graphic novel does not offer specific solutions, “the protagonists’ unlearning processes gesture towards emancipation,” a frequent resolve in many comics dealing with precarity. Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi investigate love as an “existential and political battleground” for Italian women as illustrated in several graphic

12  María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches novels by Flavia Biondi, Cristina Portolano, and Rita Petruccioli, who “portray the gendered dimension of emotional precariousness.” By highlighting the connection between social precarity and “liquid love” (Bauman 2003), Mandolini and Busi Rizzi argue that these narratives disentangle both the patriarchal notion of romantic love and the feminist myth of sexual liberation by investigating existential precariousness as marked by financial, geographical and identity insecurities. The second section, “The young self in crisis in (auto)biographic comics,” shows the potential of graphic narratives to document and encounter real lives relying on first-hand experience (Mickwitz 2016, 9). Andrea Hoff explores trauma and resilience of Roma youth in the Czech Republic through two graphic documentaries of the collective Ašta Šmé. Hoff carries out a visual-spatial analysis of emptiness and solitude to explore “the psychological implications of childhood trauma as a continuing narrative” and how it is possible to turn precariousness into agency by fracturing, reproducing and reprocessing such trauma. Agency is also key in the work of Michael Kersulov. His chapter examines a teacher-led study involving gifted students creating their own comics in order to negotiate with their personal experiences of vulnerability, including alienation, bullying, or even physical violence. Kersulov traces similarities in these comics and identifies recurrent objects of crisis representing achievement, alienation and pain, showing the intersectionality of giftedness, gender, class and race. The third section, “Superheroic precarity,” manifests how precarity and precariousness consistently appear in U.S. superhero comics. Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado offer a transversal exploration of different superheroes of DC and Marvel Comics who balance their precarious economic status in their daily life with their double identity as superheroes; their precarious condition reveals the intersection of class, race and gender, echoing the uncertainty and alienation of comics creators and the problems confronted by young consumers of comic books. Óscar Gual Boronat and Mario Millanes Vaquero analyze Marvel supervillains of African descent in the 1960s and 1970s, coinciding with crucial battles for civil rights in the United States. Gual Boronat and Millanes Vaquero note that, even if these comic books reflected real-world challenges faced by Black communities, the dreams of the characters trying to improve their living conditions were deferred and, as a result, they turned “to crime for the sake of survival, revenge, or riches.” The three chapters in part four, “Surviving in a precarious market: labour insecurity and the publishing sector,” present different experiences within the publishing industry, ranging from collaborative projects to self-edition or setting up small publishing houses. Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele approach the new generation of fumettiste (women creators born after 1980) in the context of the Italian comics market, carrying out a survey to enquire into their authorial self-perception and identity building. They observe how these women authors, despite their collective and individual efforts, fail to obtain a sufficient income and how they still produce self-edited comics in an attempt to

Introduction 13 express their identity, “maintaining a delicate balance between the self and the collective, the mainstream and the alternative.” Amadeo Gandolfo adopts a similar position in his chapter on the memes of Argentine Pedro Mancini which expose his precarious existence as a cartoonist by taking a “punk stance,” romanticizing and ridiculing at the same time his impoverished situation and antisocial tendencies. For Mancini, Gandolfo argues, memes act as a bridge with the audience of his comics while at the same time promote a carefully concocted image of the artist. Mancini’s refusal to monetize his popular memes breaks the logic of capitalism, this way, he can continue mythologizing his precarity while sharing it and strengthening the bonds with his community. In Chapter 12, Enrique Bordes engages in conversation with Quebecois author and editor Vicent Giard. In this chapter, Bordes addresses the remarkable impact of Giard on the Quebecois comics ecosystem between 2008 and 2019 “as a catalyst for the spaces that gave life to a creative community,” analyzing Giard’s account of his experience setting up several publishing houses, a web platform, a workshop, and several festivals. Giard’s endeavours, most of them non-profit, show how comics can be turned into a form of political activism. The last part, “Spaces of vulnerability / spaces of action” includes three chapters that address especially vulnerable collectives and individuals—LGBTIQ+, migrants, African American, Asian American, and Hispanic—as represented in Argentine, German and U.S. non-fiction comics. The fourth and last chapter explores the uses of self-edited comics as part of industrial action. Laura Cristina Fernández addresses dissident sexual identity in the recent LGBTIQ+ comics production in the context of economic crisis, right-wing hate speeches and middle-class impoverishment of Argentina. Fernández shows how comics engage in self-assertion by promoting visibility and embracing vulnerability as a form of resistance, by turning marginalization “into an aesthetic-political stance, into a community of support for the production of these discourses and into a re-evaluation in positive terms of otherness.” In Chapter 14, Julia C. Gómez Sáez carries out a formal and thematic analysis of Reinhard Kleist’s Der Traum von Olympia (2015), the graphic biography of Somalian Olympic runner Samia Yusuf Omar, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe to participate in the London Olympic Games. As opposed to Giuseppe Catozzella’s novel Don’t Tell Me You’re Afraid (2017), Kleist’s approach does not colonize the voice of Omar. According to Gómez Sáez, this is possible thanks to Kleist’s techniques reminiscent of photojournalism, his array of intermedial references, and the use of a diverted firstperson narrator. In Chapter 15, Monica Chiu reflects upon the extradiegetic victims of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in Derf Backderf’s graphic narrative My Friend Dahmer (2012). By not representing sixteen out of seventeen Black, Hispanic and Asian victims, some of them poor, some gay, Backderf places their killer’s vulnerability over the “disposed and disposable” bodies of his victims. Chiu reminds us that “what is absent from the page (sexual violence, violated gay and minority bodies) is as telling as what is present.” Through this absence, the precarious lives of

14  María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches the victims are non-grievable, hence by not representing them, “they cannot be mourned because they are always already lost” (Butler 2004, 33). In the last chapter, Lydia Wysocki, comics creator and research associate explores academic precarity and the possibilities of comics for actively contributing to organized forms of protest, not simply for describing those. She includes several of her strike comics, collaboratively produced and distributed during the period 2018–2020 in the context of the protests of trade unions against inequitable employment practices in UK Higher Education. Wysocki’s comics are an example of solidarity against precarious employment, showing the potential of graphic narratives to turn shared vulnerability into a mechanism of visibility and resistance.

Note 1. Fictional narratives have also dealt with sexual diversity, as in the recent Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki & Rosemary Valero O’Connell or Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable & Ellen T. Crenshaw, both published in 2019.

References Adorno, Theodor W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory. London: Bloomsbury. Ahmed, Maaheen and Benoît Crucifix. 2018. Comics Memories: Archives and Styles. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Ahmed, Sara. 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bagieu, Pénélope et al. 2018, June 17. Collectif d’auteurs: “Parce que nous vivons encore de notre main qui écrit ou illustre.” Le Parisien. http://www.leparisien.fr/cultureloisirs/collectif-d-auteurs-parce-que-nous-vivons-encore-de-notre-main-qui-ecrit-ouillustre-17-06-2018-7776942.php. Basso, Vicent M. 2019. “The Poverty of the Kid: Visualizing the Ragamuffin in R.F. Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley.” Image TexT 10, no. 3. http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/ archives/v10_3/basso/. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2003. Liquid Love. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2007. Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2017. Retrotopia. Cambridge: Polity Press. Berardi, Franco (Bifo). 2005. “What Does Cognitariat Mean? Work, Desire and Depression.” Cultural Studies Review 11, no. 2: 57–63. http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/csrj/index. ———. 2017. Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility. New York: Verso Books, 2017. Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. ———. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso. ———. 2012. “Precarious Life, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Cohabitation.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 26, no. 2: 134–151. https://doi.org/10.5325/ jspecphil.26.2.0134. ———. 2020. The Force of Non-Violence: An Ethico-Political Bind. London: Verso.

Introduction 15 Butler, Judith, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay, eds. 2016. Vulnerability in Resistance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chute, Hillary L. 2010. Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. New York: Columbia University. ———. 2016. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Claesson, Christian, ed. 2019. Narrativas precarias: crisis y subjetividad en la cultura española actual. Gijón: Hoja de Lata Editorial. Claviez, Thomas, ed. 2016. The Common Growl: Toward a Poetics of Precarious Community. New York: Fordham University Press. Duncan, Randy and Matthew J. Smith. 2009. The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Eaglestone, Robert. 2010. “Ethical Criticism.” In Michael Ryan, Gregory Castle, Robert Eaglestone, and M. Keith Booker, eds. The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2012. Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi. Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? London: Zero Books. Galaxina, Andrea. 2017. ¡Puedo decir lo que quiera! ¡Puedo hacer lo que quiera! Una genealogía incompleta del fanzine hecho por chicas. Madrid: Bombas para Desayunar. Garcés, Marina. 2017. Nueva ilustración radical. Barcelona: Anagrama. García, Santiago. 2010. La novela gráfica. Bilbao: Astiberri. Halberstam, Jack. 2018. Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Han, Byung-Chul. 2015. The Burnout Society. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hessel, Stéphane. 2011. “Indignez-vous!” The Nation 292 (March 7/14), 15–19. Iwata-Weickgenannt, Kristina and Roman Rosenbaum, eds. 2015. Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture. London: Routledge. López Alós, Javier. 2019. Crítica de la razón precaria: la vida intelectual ante la obligación de lo extraordinario. Madrid: Catarata. Lorey, Isabell. 2015. State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious. London: Verso Books. Martínez-Pinna, Eduardo. 2019. Comix Underground. De la subversión a la reinvención. Alcalá de Henares: Ediciones Marmotilla. Mickwitz, Nina. 2016. Documentary Comics. Graphic Truth-Telling in a Skeptical Age. London: Palgrave McMillan. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2016. “Foreword: The Common Growl.” In Thomas Claviez, ed. The Common Growl: Toward a Poetics of Precarious Community. New York: Fordham University Press. Parks, Gregory S. and Matthew W. Hughey. 2017. “‘A Choice of Weapons’. The X-Men and the Metaphor for Approaches to Racial Equality.” Indiana Law Journal 92, no. 5. https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol92/iss5/1/. Polak, Kate. 2017. Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. Romero-Jódar, Andrés. 2017. The Trauma Graphic Novel. Abingdon: Routledge. Rys, Michael. 2021. “The Aesthetics of Precarity. Precarious Realities and Visual Modes of Representation.” Image [&] Narrative 22, no. 3 (October): 1–6. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/2755/2218.

16  María Porras Sánchez and Gerardo Vilches Shamoon, Deborah. 2011. “Films on Paper: Cinematic Narrative in Gekiga.” In Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog, ed. Mangatopia. Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World. Exeter: Libraries Unlimited: 21–36. Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2014. “The Precariat.” Contexts 13, no. 4 (November): 10–12. https://doi. org/10.1177/1536504214558209. Szép, Eszter. 2020. Comics and the Body: Drawing, Reading, and Vulnerability. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. Varillas, Rubén. 2009. La arquitectura en viñetas. Texto y discurso en el cómic. Sevilla: Viaje a Bizancio Ediciones. Whitlock, Gillian. 2006. “Autographics: The Seeing ‘I’ of the Comics.” Modern Fiction Studies 52, no. 4, Graphic Narrative Special Issue (Winter): 965–979. Zafra, Remedios. 2017. El entusiasmo: Precariedad y trabajo creativo en la era digital. Barcelona: Anagrama. Žižek, Slavoj. 2008. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. New York: Picador.

Part I

Representations of Precarious Youth in Graphic Fiction

1

The Ideological Depiction of Childhood during the Great Depression From Little Orphan Annie to Little Lefty Francisco Saez de Adana

Introduction “Little Orphan Annie […] is the outspoken champion of the right in the political sense” (Caniff 1946, 489). These words belong to the chapter “The Comics,” written by Milton Caniff for While You Were Gone, a book published in 1946 in the United States. It was distributed among soldiers returning home after World War II, rendering a panoramic vision of what the country had been like during the war in order to facilitate their reincorporation into society. Interestingly, the book addressed all the important aspects of American society at the time. Among these aspects, comics were included, particularly newspaper comic strips (although Superman is also mentioned), as a sign of the relevance that this medium had at the time, largely due to the number of readers and the impact their stories had on American readers. This importance is demonstrated in that same chapter when the author presents a list of the most read series at the time, headed by Joe Palooka, with 40 million daily readers, and in which Little Orphan Annie occupies the fourth position with 32 million daily readers. However, the interesting thing about that sentence is how, in contrast, the author defines himself and his colleagues as progressives, mainly because his comics focused on the fight against injustice, frequently as a consequence of the social inequalities derived from the Great Depression. Starting in 1929, the comic strip, especially the adventure strip, became an important breeding ground for the need for escapism and adventure, which already appeared in radio and film serials, media that welcomed, with great naturalness, the serial model of daily comic strips (Burg 1996, 74–78). Thus, the adventure hero developed a strong class component as a result of the social inequalities created by the Great Depression. As McElvaine states, “the 1930s [was] the time in which the values of compassion, sharing and social justice became the most dominant that they have ever been in American history” (1984, 7). The search for social equality was emphasized by the New Deal policies enacted by Roosevelt, which were supported, according to Caniff, by most comic strip authors. This support was made explicit in Ham Fisher’s Joe Palooka: in one story, the president himself appeared as a positive character which had the approval of the then-occupant of the White House. DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-3

20  Francisco Saez de Adana This progressivism of the comic strip, according to Caniff, represented an exception in Harold Gray, a figure in clear opposition to the New Deal and in favour of the fiercest capitalism that he would carry out for many years in his Little Orphan Annie series. Knowing Caniff’s later career in his Steve Canyon series and his subsequent anti-Communist reputation and support for American participation in the Vietnam War, it is curious that this author made such an affirmation. Even today, it is sometimes difficult to defend this idea when one sees the treatment of certain Asian characters at the beginning of a series, such as Terry and the Pirates, created by Caniff, precisely the author of the mentioned chapter.1 This introduction serves to comment on two aspects discussed in this chapter. On the one hand, the ideological nature of Gray’s work, and his image of childhood and youth, is expressed through the character of little Annie. On the other hand, this ideological perspective is classified as one side or the other of the political spectrum, which is sometimes reductionist in the case of comic strips; they are works by the same author made over many years and reflect the evolution of the author’s thinking, which is typically consistent with the facts and historical events that happen around them. In any case, this conservative ideology and its outcomes—through the appearance of the character Little Lefty, who was created in response to this conservatism and who will show us another possible image of childhood and youth at the time—will be the focus of this chapter.

The reactionary childhood: Little Orphan Annie Little Orphan Annie was a series created in 1924 by Harold Gray at the behest of Joseph M. Patterson, director of the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, who was a very important figure in the development of seriality in the American comic strip (Harvey 1994). The series begins by narrating the sad life of an orphan, Annie, and her dog Sandy (who appeared a few months after the series was launched) in an orphanage with a clear Dickensian environment, in which Gray and Patterson try to exploit the adaptation of the narrative model of the melodramatic silent serial, which was the source of so many successes with series such as The Gumps and Gasoline Alley. A narrative model based on an “openended narrative” (Gardner 2012, 41) consisted of telling stories that continued from one instalment to another without aiming for a specific ending. This model became fundamental to introducing the treatment of everyday life in comics, which was key to the success of Patterson’s factory series, hooking readers to follow the adventures of their favourite characters every day. Initially, Annie’s situation is marked by her orphan status and her obligation to live with the routine abuse of the supervisor of the institution where she resides, who is a cold and sarcastic woman. The story has features of the picaresque novel, in which the protagonist has several adventures, experiencing the difference between good and evil; the rewards she receives for her faultless morality alternate with unfair situations derived from her condition as an orphan. Her life changes radically when Mrs. Warbucks takes Annie to her house, and the

Ideological Depiction of Childhood during the Great Depression 21 billionaire Oliver Warbucks, her husband, becomes fond of the girl and decides to adopt her. From there, she will become a character who has adventures in a fundamentally corrupt world. Warbucks himself made his fortune as an arms dealer during the war. However, the image that is shown to us of this character is that of the homemade man resulting from the American dream, understood as the achievement of the benefits ensured by large corporations and financial speculation. This idyllic image of the Warbucks figure and his financial success was nothing more than a representation of what the average American felt was happening in the country. In the boom years before the Great Depression, many citizens believed that through their efforts, they could become like Warbucks. Economic indicators supported that idea. Thus, at the beginning of 1929, the future prospects for American society could not be brighter. Gross national income rose from $61 billion in 1922 to $87 billion in 1929, such that many businesses had profits above 80% in this decade (Meltzer 1969, 9–10). This had an impact on the well-being of the average American, who began to enjoy domestic comforts such as the refrigerator; others of a more luxurious nature, such as the car, began to be found in most homes in the country. In this scenario, Herbert Hoover took the reins of government in early 1929, hoping that, in a very short time, poverty would disappear from the nation. In such a situation, Annie’s life with Warbucks merely idealizes the American dream for youth of the late 1920s—a dream based on family unity sustained by the economic profit provided by industry and financial speculation, which led to the economic collapse of the Great Depression. Initially, Gray (and while Hoover remained in the White House) was no stranger to this circumstance. Thus, in 1931, Warbucks loses his fortune, and Annie has to experience first-hand the difficulties suffered by American youth at the time. Some of them appeared in the pages of the same newspapers in which readers followed the adventures of Annie, which paralleled the news of the gradually unfolding economic collapse that impacted their own lives. Even at this time, Annie faces capitalism in the figure of the millionaire Phineas P. Pinchpenny, the richest man in Cosmic City, a city where the protagonist ends up in late 1932. Not so before that, in his 1928 presidential campaign, Hoover stated, “We are a nation of progressives; we differ as to what is the road to progress” (2011, 247). Gray tries to show Hoover’s supposedly progressive character, whom he fervently followed, through Annie’s fight against the power embodied in the figure of Pinchpenny. However, his idea of progressivism is completely clear in the daily strips published between October 17 and 22, 1932, in which Annie sabotages the strike of the city’s newspaper boy by offering to do his job for less money. Her argument is the following: “‘magine a guy like that strikin’ for more money with jobs as scarce as they are now. He should have been glad he had a good job.” The solution, therefore, is a defence of the employer and an attack on the worker’s right to fight for better economic conditions. At the same time, Gray repeatedly defended private property, putting phrases like the following into Annie’s mouth when referring to people who did not have

22  Francisco Saez de Adana

Figure 1.1  Little Orphan Annie daily strip, November 8, 1932. Source: Gray Harold. 2009. Little Orphan Annie vol. 4: A House Divided. San Diego: IDW Publishing

jobs during the Great Depression: “If they had faith in their own strength, they could use a loan to start a small business or a stall like me!” (Gray 2010, 135) or “However, where are the jobless? I only know people who want to work and people who want to live in leisure, onto the backs of others …” (Gray 2010, 150), at a time when there were 16 million unemployed individuals in the United States. This way of understanding things will become more acute in 1932, when Roosevelt took office and, above all, when he began to implement his New Deal policies. Later, in 1953, Gray himself, in a letter, described FDR as a Communist. Gray’s negative view toward everything that had to do with this ideology is clearly reflected in the life that Annie leads in those years. In fact, his aversion to everything that Roosevelt stood for was already evident before he came to power, in the strip of November 8, 1932 (see Figure 1.1), where Annie calls for the mobilization of the Conservative vote as the only possibility to counter the trade union movement that supported, at the time, the Democratic Party. From that moment, a constant theme was the identification of everything he had to do with the left, with the most negative aspects of society. In the story that ran through all of 1932 starring Trixie, Warbucks’ second wife, her artistic and bohemian friends, generally associated with the left, are depicted as lazy upstarts who only want Warbucks for his money, as Trixie herself does. The Sunday comic of November 25, 1934, and the daily strip the following day show an example of this. The latter introduces a character who considers that working is for losers since one can live on social benefits. Warbucks rates this as a reprehensible circumstance in society, stating that even in the Great Depression, a good man could find work if he tried hard enough. It is constantly implied that New Deal supporters want to take advantage of businessmen like Warbucks, which can be summed up in the phrase that Gray puts in his mouth in the December 21, 1934, strip: “Well, maybe the rich are rich by being stingy and the poor get poor by giving too freely.” Keep in mind that in that episode, Warbucks has once again lost his fortune (something that happens several times during the Great Depression) to try to bring the series closer to the reality of its readers. However, even in these situations, his ideological position did not undergo any great changes.

Ideological Depiction of Childhood during the Great Depression 23 Warbucks’ right-wing teachings appear again and again in Annie’s attitude. Every time Annie has problems, her solution is focused on getting money. Although she sometimes solves her problem through paid employment, as in the case of selling newspapers, there are many times when the character, even being a child, tries to set up her own business. The images of Annie counting money are numerous, and at some point, a strip is even dedicated to her counting the interest on the loans associated with her undertakings. The conclusion is always the same: Economic investment and capitalist growth produce well-being; for this, it is not necessary to be a rich businessman like Warbucks, but even a girl like Annie, who represents the youth of her country, can benefit from capitalism. You can succeed in a system that, according to Gray, rewards the efforts of those willing to take risks. During the years of the Great Depression, the series combined its melodramatic character with a strong defence of the bourgeoisie and capitalism against left-wing ideology. These elements were not present previously, but the series was much more focused on the main soap opera themes that formed its fundamental core. However, despite this clear positioning, the series did not lose followers in those years. Given the support that Roosevelt had—which led him to win the presidency four times and which today makes him one of the most revered presidents by Americans (McElvaine 1984, 113)—it seems likely that people who were opposed ideologically to this position would have fervently followed Gray’s series. Most likely, thanks to the melodramatic character that managed to keep readers hooked regardless of his ideology, the series maintained a number of millionaire readers in those days. As Stella Ress states, “Depression-era culture was particularly successful in bringing together the child and adult spheres” (2010, 797) because “adults were ready to see their children as something more than cute and innocent dependents. They saw them as potential and/or actual workers, able to earn their keep” (Ress 2010, 796). Annie allowed adults to remember their pre-Great Depression youth and children to understand that they could play an active role in building another life through work. This idea went beyond ideology and was possibly the cause of the success of the character, who transcended the comics and enjoyed several radio and film adaptations. This success earned the author the hatred of some sectors of the American left, especially in the years before World War II.

The progressive childhood: Little Lefty The success of Little Orphan Annie resulted in the appearance of many imitators, a practice that was very common in the comic strip industry in those years. The series most clearly influenced by Gray’s work was Little Annie Rooney, created by Ed Verdier for King Features Syndicate, which tells the story of an orphan and her dog Zero, with no effort made to hide its influence. Another Annie-influenced series was Frankie Doodle, created by Ben Batsford in 1934. Even in the United Kingdom, Belinda Blue-Eyes appeared in the Daily Mirror, whom George Perry and Alan Aldridge defined as “a perpetual waif, a British

24  Francisco Saez de Adana counterpart to the transatlantic Little Orphan Annie” (1971, 204). In all these series, especially in those created during the Great Depression, there is an attempt to move away from the conservative ideology that permeated the original series and to reach out to working-class readers. The series that truly emerged as an ideological response to (and as a result of) the left’s rejection of Little Orphan Annie was Little Lefty, a character created in 1934 by Maurice del Bourgo (Del), published by The Daily Worker, the newspaper of the U.S. Communist Party. This newspaper began circulating in 1924 in New York and reflected the prevailing views of the party, although some attempts were made to reflect a broader spectrum of opinions from the American left (Schappes 1944, 10). It was published until 1958, but its audience was never very high; at its peak, the newspaper had a daily circulation of 35,000 copies. Like most newspapers at the time, The Daily Worker included comics on its pages since the beginning of its publishing history. However, the comics that were published in that newspaper were not the large series distributed by the syndicates but rather self-produced. The newspaper’s readership figures did not allow it to acquire too much content distributed by the syndicates, the fact being that the ideological line marked by the newspaper made most of this content uninteresting. In this scenario, and as a reflection of the problem posed by a series as successful as Little Orphan Annie in the direction of The Daily Worker, Little Lefty was born to show that another childhood was possible in the United States, one that was not shown in traditional comic strips. This statement of intent is demonstrated from the first strip in which the character expresses “his right to exist on his own terms and his refusal to be intimidated by others. The others are a motley array of syndicated characters: Popeye, Betty Boop, Buster Brown, Mickey Mouse, the Katzenjammer Kids, and Little Orphan Annie, among others” (Brunner 2010, 190) (see Figure 1.2). For this reason, the series traces the adventures of a youngster and his gang of progressive urban adolescents in their fight against the injustices created by the capitalist system’s lack of equality. Little Lefty does not have a millionaire benefactor who makes him see life with a vision focused on achieving the American dream through increasing individual

Figure 1.2  Little Lefty daily strip, October 8, 1934. Source: Del Bourgo, Maurice, October 8, 1934. The Daily Worker.

Ideological Depiction of Childhood during the Great Depression 25 wealth. The series understands that, for there to be supposed winners, there must also be losers and that defeat is not always due to a lack of effort or ability but of unfair social conditions that create inertia that is difficult to break. These situations are what Del portrays again and again in his series through the adventures of a neighbourhood boy and his friends: a left-wing Yellow Kid who, in the same way that the character in the yellow nightgown showed us the backyards of big cities, presented, in his case, the back room of the American dream.2 Little Lefty’s ideology is expressed repeatedly throughout the series. First, his best friend is a Black boy, Peanuts Johnson, and his defence of the African American minority is evident in many respects; for example, he helps the family of his friend when they are going to be evicted by the owner of the apartment where they live, with the help of the police, just because they are Black. Another instance is when he attends the Unemployment Congress in Washington in 1935, and learns that African American delegates are not allowed in the restaurant, so he decides to eat with them. In all these actions, Lefty always defends his Communist ideology, identifying this with the fight against social injustices that were typical of the time. Therefore, the character is always identified with the political leanings of the newspaper in which he was published. This identification, and the idea that the series was a response to Little Orphan Annie, is clearly shown from the reader’s point of view, as Brunner points out: “When the Daily Worker expanded into a 7-day operation with a Sunday edition, readers contributing ideas to the new edition championed Little Lefty. ‘I certainly feel,’ wrote PS from the Bronx, ‘that Lefty in colors and on a full page would and could, in time, be as much of a weapon as Little Orphan Annie: only in our paper would fight for the workers’” (2010, 192). On the other hand, this response is apparent in strips such as that of October 25, 1936. Just as Little Orphan Annie mobilized the right wing in the 1932 elections to support Hoover in the 1936 elections, Lefty teaches us that other types of candidates are possible when he introduces his Uncle John to one of his teammates on the baseball team. When he learns that Lefty’s Uncle John is running for the election, the conservative teammate imagines a rich millionaire and is surprised—and obviously disappointed—when he discovers that Uncle John is nothing more than a worker who is a mechanic and who defines himself as a “working class politician” in the same way that Earl Browder, candidate of the Communist Party in the presidential elections that year, did (Nicolaides 1988, 125). With his constant campaign against the established order and social injustice, Little Lefty conveys the sense that in a period of crisis such as the Great Depression, childhood and youth can provide a different response to the traditional positions expressed in many of the comic series published at the time. Most likely, Lefty and Del would laugh at the progressivism that Caniff advocates for in his writing. According to Lefty, one cannot be progressive if one does not fight against evictions, address the needs of minorities or give the working class a voice in institutions. This is an aspect that comic strips of the era frequently suffered from—wanting to tell stories that could be massively distributed through the syndicates meant that authors had to be careful not to offend anyone,

26  Francisco Saez de Adana especially those in the majority. The comic series were strongly controlled by publishers for this purpose, a sense of control that would work in their favour when they had to face the audiences of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which led to the implementation of the Comics Code (Harvey 2007, 671). However, at the time of the Great Depression, The Daily Worker felt that it needed to create its own comic series to respond to the various versions of Annie that proliferated in the mainstream comic strip business, with an answer that would show another possible way out for youth in a period of crisis. That the way out of the crisis was war probably indicates that this objective was not achieved; it is also telling that many of the series to which Little Lefty responds with his birth are remembered today, while Del’s series was unable to transcend the popular imagination. The impact of Little Orphan Annie’s 32 million readers is clearly greater than that of The Daily Worker’s 35,000 readers.

The circle is closed: The Spanish Civil War Interestingly, one issue that Little Lefty addresses with greater profusion is, from its outbreak, the Spanish Civil War. The series, following the editorial line of The Daily Worker, explicitly demonstrates his support for the Republican side. No other American strip in those years echoed the war in Spain as Little Lefty did. Thus, in the three years of the conflict, 73 explicit references were made to the war in Spain; many other implicit references were part of a plot in which the war was the trigger, although it was not overtly mentioned. Little Lefty’s interest was generally focused on what happened to childhood and youth in Spain. In this way, there are numerous examples in which the character goes directly to the reader, asking for help for Spanish children and war orphans who were not lucky enough to have a Warbucks to take them in. These strips were usually published on Saturdays and reflected the many activities that, at the time, were organized in New York for the same purpose. It was very common to see announcements of these activities on the same page of The Daily Worker where Little Lefty was published. It must be taken into account that Little Lefty did nothing more than support the same issue that the newspaper that hosted him was supporting in Spain at the time, which was reflected in the constant presence of related news on its pages. In reality, this was just one more example of the concern and support for the Republican side that part of New York society expressed, and that was manifested in different ways, including in the content of The Daily Worker (Carroll and Fernández 2007). In addition to these isolated strips, on many occasions, the Spanish Civil War was involved in the plot of the serial story that Little Lefty told. For example, there is a story in which the protagonist wants to join the Lincoln Brigade until he realizes that he is too young. His reaction to this situation is to create the youth section of the Brigade with all the members of his gang. Again, it is shown that another kind of youth is possible, one that is involved in real problems, even if they take place in another part of the world. On other occasions, the war in Spain is also mentioned in other situations in Lefty’s life in his neighbourhood

Ideological Depiction of Childhood during the Great Depression 27

Figure 1.3  Little Lefty daily strip, August 5, 1937. Source: Del Bourgo, Maurice, August 5, 1937. The Daily Worker.

that, in principle, have nothing to do with the conflict. For example, when a construction company wants to destroy the park where the gang plays, Little Lefty and his friends camp in that park, forming a resistance against that company in another anti-eviction movement that was so common in the strip. This resistance is not only an example of the struggle of the working class against capitalism but also reflects the struggle of the Republican side against the Francoists in Madrid. There are several explicit mentions, the most significant of which is the “No pasaran” (sic) written in Spanish, that the band shouts when faced with the capitalist invasion (see Figure 1.3). Another significant example is the organized boxing match between Little Lefty’s school professor and the bully who terrorizes all the boys in the neighbourhood. Not only will the profits from this fight go to help the Spanish children who are victims of the war, but these two fighters are an analogy for the two sides of the war. The professor is the generous intellectual whose physical strength is not very great and who reflects the Republican side, while the bully brutally imposes physical strength on him but lacks intelligence. This is the view that the part of New York society that read The Daily Worker had of the situation in Spain, where according to their perspective, the Republican regime favoured intellectual development in opposition to the force imposed by Francoism. This analogy is not something that comes from a certain interpretation of the story but rather becomes explicit at the end on the day of the fight. At the beginning of the fight between the two, the professor is crushed by the bully, and the reaction of the public is to say, “He’ll take the professor like Franco took Madrid” (Del Bourgo 1937). Therefore, the references to the Spanish war and support for the Republican side are explicit and recurrent in Little Lefty’s adventures as a reflection of support from part of New York society toward the government of the Second Republic. In any case, despite these constant references to the conflict, it is difficult to think that Little Lefty had a great impact outside the small readership of The Daily Worker. That is why it is curious that the most important reference to the Spanish Civil War in a series distributed by a syndicate and, therefore, with a national distribution, takes place in Little Orphan Annie, although it is in the

28  Francisco Saez de Adana year 1941 after the Spanish Civil War has ended. For this, it must be understood that Gray’s reactionary character was clearly modified after Pearl Harbor when the United States entered the war. At the time, the author became one of the most ardent defenders of the fight against fascism and of Roosevelt’s policies in this regard. A more significant example is the story “The Junior Commandos,” which was narrated practically throughout the war. This story begins with Annie’s work in the sale of war bonds to help American troops but quickly turns into the fight against Nazi spies who have infiltrated the United States. In this story, the character of Dr. Zee is introduced, a doctor who helps the most disadvantaged in the war years for the symbolic amount of 1 dollar. Jeet Heer perceived Dr. Zee as Gray’s tribute to Roosevelt (2014, 7), not only because of his socialist behaviour but more explicitly because a few months after the character appears, he loses his arm; this does not prevent him from continuing with his disinterested task, stating that there are other important disabled people in history, in a clear reference to Roosevelt. The interesting thing about Dr. Zee, in this case, is that he was a former combatant in the Spanish Civil War. Although Gray never explicitly mentions which side Dr. Zee fought on, the fact that he left Spain because he was horrified by the cruelty of the war and, more specifically, by the lack of mercy, by the vision “of men and women (…) slaughtered like cattle” once the conflict was over clearly aligns him with the losing side, and constitutes one of the most acidic criticisms of Franco’s policy after having won the war, which can be found in American comics of this period. Paradoxically, this criticism came from an author who was considered a reactionary who defended Hoover, president who affirmed that “the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic had […] some responsibility in the difficulties of world economic performance” (Espasa 2020, 37).

Conclusions This chapter has shown how the representation of childhood in comic strips during the Great Depression was different depending on the ideology of the authors. It is not the same as the conservative perspective in Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie than the Little Lefty’s leftist, which followed the precepts of The Daily Worker. The comic strips allow us, therefore, to see the different sides of American society in those times. However, these ideological differences cannot be affirmed in absolute terms. For instance, the ideological turn that occurred in the U.S. before its entry into the war was reflected in most of the series of those years, of which Little Orphan Annie was no exception. The serial nature of the comic strips meant that many series lasted years, even decades, and in most cases, under the direction of the same author. This means that the authorial views, some of them ideological, became more nuanced over time, undermining a simplistic classification of the authors as progressives or reactionaries. Their work does not cease, showing a temporal evolution of society in the medium of newspaper strips, so conditioned by historical and social events due to their publication along with the news of the time.

Ideological Depiction of Childhood during the Great Depression 29 This does not negate, however, the general feeling that Little Orphan Annie was a strip on the more conservative spectrum when it came to ideology. The story told in “The Junior Commandos” is nothing more than a parenthesis motivated by particular historical circumstances. However, it is a hiatus of no less than four years in the history of the publication of the series, which provides enough stories to show the author’s position on issues such as the Spanish Civil War. When studying comic strips’ ideology, some series are classified, on occasions, in absolute terms on one side of the political spectrum. However, in a series that lasted for several years, it is convenient to consider the possibility that the author’s ideas changed and evolved. As Jeet Heer states, “Harold Gray’s politics were not static. Working on a strip that appeared daily, he responded to events and changing political conditions” (2009, 17). This statement can be extended to any series of times, especially at the ideological level.

Notes 1. The case of Caniff’s work is paradigmatic. It is true that during the Sino-Japanese war, the author had the courage to place his American characters in favor of the Chinese resistance (also led by a woman of that nationality) fighting against the Japanese invasion long before that his country broke its neutrality after the invasion of Pearl Harbor. However, this does not imply that the author does not express, on many occasions, a paternalistic view of some of the characters of Asian origin. In fact, he later carried out work that can only be characterized as racist and stereotyped, such as when he made a commission from the army with the title “How to spot a Jap” (Saez de Adana 2018, 1064–1065). 2. At first glance, one might consider that the differences between Annie and Lefty come not only from their ideology but also from their gender. Gray initially wanted Annie to be a boy (named Otto) and only changed the gender of her character at the insistence of the newspaper’s editor, Joseph M. Patterson. Although Gray gave in to the pressure, as Abate analyzed, Annie breaks with the conventions of a series starring girls, and “differs from her orphan girl counterparts both in her attitude and in her actions” (2019, 25). Abate also demonstrates the numerous times in which Annie fights with other boys to show that her behavior can be associated with the typical conduct of male characters when necessary (2019, 27–30). Robertson Wojcik expressed this in the same sense when he stated that Annie was a revision of typical orphan girl stories (2017, 13–15).

References Abate, Michelle Ann. 2019. Funny Girls. Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Brunner, Edward. 2010. “The New York Daily Worker’s ‘Popular Front’ Comics, 1936– 1945,” American Periodicals, 17 (2): 184–207. Burg, David F. 1996. The Great Depression. An Eyewitness History. New York: Facts on File. Caniff, Milton. 1946. “The Comics.” In While You Were Gone. A Report in War Life in the United States, edited by Jack Goodman, 488–510. New York: Simon and Schuster. Carroll Peter N., and James D. Fernández, eds. 2007. Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War. New York: NYU Press.

30  Francisco Saez de Adana Del Bourgo, Maurice. “Little Lefty.” The Daily Worker, September 19, 1937. Espasa, Andreu. 2020. Historia del New Deal. Conflicto y reforma durante la Gran Depresión. Madrid: Los libros de La Catarata. Gardner, Jared. 2012. Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First Century Storytelling. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Gray, Harold. 2010. Little Orphan Annie vol. 5: The One-Way Road to Justice. San Diego: IDW Publishing. Harvey, Robert C. 1994. The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Harvey, Robert C. 2007. Meanwhile … Milton Caniff, a Biography. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. Heer, Jeet. 2009. “Tough Times and Tempering Steel.” In Harold Gray, Little Orphan Annie vol. 4: A House Divided (or Does Fate Trick Trixie?), 7–19. San Diego: IDW Publishing. Heer, Jeet. 2014. “We’re All Loyal Americans: Annie Goes to War.” In Harold Gray, Little Orphan Annie vol. 10: The Junior Commandos, edited by Idem, 5–17. San Diego: IDW Publishing. Hoover, Herbert. 2011. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover. The Great Depression, 1929–1941. Plano: Read Books. McElvaine, Robert. 1984. The Great Depression. America 1929–1941. New York: Times Books. Meltzer, Milton. 1969. Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Nicolaides, Becky M. 1988. “Radio Electioneering in the American Presidential Campaigns of 1932 and 1936,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 8 (2): 115–138. Perry, George, and Alan Aldridge. 1971. The Penguin Book of Comics. London: Penguin Books. Ress, Stella. 2010. “Bridging the Generation Gap: Little Orphan Annie in the Great Depression,” Journal of Popular Culture, 43 (4): 782–800. Robertson Wojcik, Pamela. 2017. “Little Orphan Annie as Streetwalker.” In Picturing Childhood. Youth in Transnational Comics, edited by Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis, 13–29. Austin: University of Texas Press. Saez de Adana, Francisco. 2018. “The Reception of the Image of China through Terry and the Pirates,” Journal of Popular Culture, 51 (4): 1057–1068. Schappes, Morris U. 1944. The Daily Worker: Heir to the Great Tradition. New York: Daily Worker.

2

Oppressive Structures and Childhood Precarity in The Witches: A Graphic Novel María Augusta Albuja Aguilar

Most of Roald Dahl’s (1916–1990) oeuvre portrays childhood precarity through poor, mistreated, and orphaned youths often paired with vulnerable grown-ups and small animals. The unlikely teams usually face oppressive structures in their own families, schools, and communities—sometimes personified by folk creatures as in The Witches (1983), a novel about an eight-year-old boy left under the care of his peculiar grandmother after his parents’ sudden death. Grandma warns him all about the monstrous creatures that take the form of women in other to trick children to fall into their traps—an idea that third-wave feminists and critics like Catherine Itzin condemned as misogynist during the later decades of the 20th century (Duncan 2014, 60). Whereas there have been several adaptations of Dahl’s works to films, TV and plays, The Witches: The Graphic Novel (2020) is the first rendition to the comic medium and its author is no other than Pénélope Bagieu (b.1982), known for humorous and feminist comics like Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World (2018) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before The Mamas & the Papas (2017), who brings a cartoonish and colourful aesthetic to this dark fantasy. In reference to intermedial formats such as children picture books, multimodal novels and comics, Serafini, Kachorsky, and Reid (2018) point out how, unfortunately, the term illustrated novel has acquired a negative connotation in which it seems like the visual images are only accompanying the text and the reader can choose to either consider or ignore them when in reality, research has suggested that illustrations enrich the meaning-making process (315). In fact, these intermedial forms defy the traditional reading experience as they “do not privilege written language as the primary source of meaning” (Serafini, Kachorsky, and Reid 2018, 314) and prove that complexity for young readers is not only attained by texts longitude or a challenging vocabulary (314–316). This is certainly the case of Quentin Blake’s (b.1932) enormous contributions to Dahl’s children’s books, including The Witches, which have provided them with a characteristic and widely recognized trait. Comics have not only faced prejudice towards their reading complexity, but also, for a long-time, female authors were in the side-lines of a male-dominated environment (Serafini, Kachorsky, and Reid 2018, 316–318). Fortunately, “not only has the content focus shifted to be more gender-inclusive, but in recent years there has also been a shift toward featuring more racially diverse characters DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-4

32  María Augusta Albuja Aguilar as well” (318), traits that can be found in The Witches: A Graphic Novel which sends the adult male characters to the backstage while putting a spotlight on a non-white eight-year-old boy and complex female characters. According to Sanders (2016), the merit of any adaptation is not only to shift a text into another aesthetic medium but its relocation in sociocultural and temporal terms, simultaneously appealing to memory and novelty to challenge the politics of the source (17–25). In this regard, the graphic novel follows Dahl’s familiar plot in which the witches transform the boy into a mouse but adds a female child character to team up with grandma and grandson to defeat the monstrous creatures—tackling the insufficient girls’ representation in western comics that the French author witnessed growing up (Elzas and Hird 2020). Likewise, Bagieu does not only update this story settled in England to the contemporary context—for instance, through the illustrations that show the 21st-century London architecture and diverse population—but also offers commentary on childhood precarity. In an interview for the podcast Spotlight on France (Elzas and Hird 2020), Bagieu emphasizes how the young protagonist in Dahl’s novel, having no one really strong around him, puts so much pressure on himself to act smart to survive, so the boy in the graphic novel is portrayed as even more concerned about everything, in a way that it looks like facing a group of evil and powerful creatures is just another thing in his to-do list; because, according to the author, children nowadays go through worse, act cautious about social and global problematics and are expected to grow up fast. Judith Butler defines precarity as the “politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death” (2009, 25–26). Therefore, we examine how the witches, as folk characters from fairy tales, could stand for an allegory of oppressive structures, such as authoritarianism, capitalism, and the use of force, that perpetuate a “heightened risk of disease, poverty, starvation, displacement, and of exposure to violence without protection” for certain populations (Butler 2009, 25–26). Then, considering that not only race, gender and class, but also age could reinforce this vulnerability, we analyze how this graphic novel goes further than the original and accentuates precarity showing the world to the reader through the perspective of characters, both at an early and at a late stage of life. And finally, we study how gender is represented in the graphic novel thanks to a feminist approach that gives voice to a new girl character, as other important revisions that challenge representation in western comics and graphic novels.

A fairy tale about oppressive structures According to Kukkonen, “contemporary comics use their complexity to engage with the legacy of postmodernism, its subversion, self-reflexivity, and moral contingency, by positing their own alternatives” (2013, 1). As a result, readers revisit the familiar through renditions of story worlds that break traditions and expectations—for instance, by bringing fairy tale characters to a current context and subverting hierarchies—which contributes to the ongoing cultural debate

Oppressive Structures and Childhood Precarity in The Witches  33 (Kukkonen 2013, 2–9). The Witches: A Graphic Novel recovers a familiar narrative that already blends diverse literary archetypes, tropes and conventions from myth, folklore, and fairy tale but creates a meaningful adaptation that suggests new takes, especially on witches, innate to fantastic horror narratives. The grandmother introduces the evil creatures in a bedtime story, assuring her eight-year-old grandson that since he is too old for fairy tales, he is ready for the truth because “adults should never lie to kids” (Bagieu 2020, 23). This dialogue is depicted inside blue-coloured palette panels, with lights and shadows to show that it is night-time, mixed with flashbacks of the grandmother recalling her childhood friend’s encounter with the witches and the girl’s fatal fate. Memories appear outside the panels where text and illustrations are placed freely against a sepia background presented as if it was the smoke coming from the grandmother’s cigarette while telling urban legends about children’s misfortunes instigated by witches. Through the representation of something that is not directly experienced by the young character but instead received through an oral folk tale, Bagieu, as a former reader of Dahl’s The Witches, allies and interacts with the graphic novel audience, retelling them a myth as the grandma does with his grandson, and welcoming them into her reinterpretation. For instance, the bedtime story in the graphic novel turns into a history masterclass taught by the grandma, a “witchophile” (Bagieu 2020, 36), who suddenly changes her tone from a folk storyteller to someone presenting the audience with scientific facts, such as the number of witches left in the world—accompanied by a world map illustration. And when the grandmother refers to the physical traits that help to recognize a witch, this is represented as if the pages were part of a scholarly book that she introduces as: “based on my research …” (37). Fairy tale’s psychoanalytic studies suggest that “many such tales were a means of working through traumatic experiences caused by the social visitations of plague, famine, and warfare, or by the sexual and social pressures created by puberty and adolescence” (Sanders 2016, 86). This poignant idea is next introduced in the graphic novel when the grandmother finishes her explanation, and the boy asks if she ever encountered a witch. The pace and tension of the scene are delayed through various panels that show the elder trying to open the door and how as a shock to the child’s question, she drops her keys to the floor. After replying a sharp “yes,” the grandmother instantly changes the subject avoiding answering the boy’s follow-up question: “does it have anything to do with your missing finger?” (Bagieu 2020, 42). Whereas she has her back turned to her grandson, the reader can still see her distressed expression, something that Kukkonen relates to the capacity of comics “to project another’s state of mind,” which is key to the meaning-making process and reading experience (2013, 7). Not long after the discussion, the boy experiences his first encounter with a witch, and the grandmother suffers from a medical emergency leading the elder and the child to take a resting vacation on the coast. Unfortunately, the Magnificent Hotel is packed with witches ironically disguised as a group of women from The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSPCC)—even if their main goal is to suppress them. In this sense and

34  María Augusta Albuja Aguilar connecting to what we have discussed on trauma, Calloni argues that fairy tales are means of revealing untold truths regarding imaginaries about fear, violence, and terror that occur at the domestic or private level, such as violence to women and children, where the perpetrator disguises as a familiar face to mislead the victim and leave them unprepared for defence, which until recently, was not discussed publicly at the political realm (2016, 67–81). The graphic novel stresses these views, portraying the Grand High Witch as a tyrannical dictator (see Figure 2.1) that soullessly zaps any other witch who contradicts her. At the same time, her subordinates are a homogenized and subjugated crowd that repeats in unison what their master says and are only there to obey her commands. The Grand High Witch repeatedly calls them stupid and yells at them—which is emphasized through her discourse, usually written in capital letters, bold type, and outside of balloons—while the other witches keep on praising her and calling her magnificent and similar epithets, limiting to murmur among themselves and seeming frightened when she addresses any of them.

Figure 2.1  The Grand High Witch as Tyrant (Bagieu 2020, 120). Source: From The Witches: The Graphic Novel. New York: Scholastic.

Oppressive Structures and Childhood Precarity in The Witches  35 The witches precarious condition comes from the fact that their political system is a dictatorship where they do not have self-agency and their lives are constantly at risk; they are frequently suffering mistreatment and verbal abuse from their superior and cannot express themselves freely as individuals. This could be explained by Hobbesian political theory, where “the metaphysics of fear can be considered as a combination of an archaic terror and a personal worry, which is functional to the constitution of an absolutist politics” (Calloni 2016, 74–75). Furthermore, the idea of singling out a vulnerable group as the public enemy is another characteristic of authoritarian and sometimes even democratic states that promote a nationalistic spirit through hate speech to justify violent actions for an apparent common purpose of defence from an imminent threat. When the Grand High Witch starts explaining her Hansel and Gretel kind of plan to get rid of all children, which involves the witches opening candy shops, a panel shows an illustration of a witch, in her human disguise, handing a money bag to a man in a suit accompanied by the Grand High Witch speech: “I’ll give you the money, and no one will ask questions” (Bagieu 2020, 121). This panel explains why these evil creatures have never been caught by the police or gone to prison—as opposed to women wrongly accused of witchcraft throughout history as the grandmother explains to the boy—which stresses the fact that they rely on a capitalist system to advance their purposes, one in which anyone with the financial means can get their way. The Grand High Witch’s plan includes a formula of her invention that transforms children into mice, so teachers in schools will be the ones setting mouse traps and getting rid of the children in the end, which points out how the education system can directly or indirectly become an accomplice on reinforcing precarious situations for young people. In that sense, this narrative fuses the main archetypes from The Pied Piper of Hamelin—the rodent infestation and the enticed children tropes—which could be read as an allegory of a threat to “the symbolic economic future of the community” (Sanders 2016, 84), that shows the consequences of a careless consumerist model which is leaving the new generations in a socioeconomic environmental crisis that has contributed to the creation of a young precariat class. Even with apparent benevolent discourses, policies and legislation in pro of children’s wellbeing, there is still hatred, abuse, neglect and prejudice towards the state of childhood—much like the witches when they present themselves as rooting for a good cause (Curtis 2014, 168). When the Grand High Witch is going to demonstrate the formula on a girl to whom she has falsely promised sweets, and once the kid notices that something is wrong and intends to escape, the evil sorceress physically abuses her. This is portrayed through a panel of her grabbing the child’s arm while the girl claims: “Hey, I know my rights!” (Bagieu 2020, 142). However, human, and particularly, children’s rights are less than respected by the witches, who as soon as they discover the boy protagonist hidden in the meeting room, carry him ruthlessly while the Grand High Witch says: “bring it to me!” “bring me the vile worm,” and quickly accuses the boy of spying on them (155). The unknown and dark forest of the classical fairy tales becomes an

36  María Augusta Albuja Aguilar interior space “invisible to the eyes of most” where “violent oppression, imprisonment, coercion, brutality, and slavery” can occur (Calloni 2016, 80). At this point, the boy is threatened as a spy that has witnessed and knows too much, so he must be cut out of the way and is hence, transformed into a mouse worsening his precarious condition as a non-white orphan child (see Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2  Boy transformed into a mouse (Bagieu 2020, 158). Source: From The Witches: The Graphic Novel. New York: Scholastic.

Oppressive Structures and Childhood Precarity in The Witches  37

Age and precarious transformations From the beginning, the boy hero is in a disempowered position as he has recently lost both of his parents. Sanders points out how is typical in this type of narrative to find characters that are between childhood and adulthood, as well as the orphan motif that offers the young character space for experience—as opposed to the idea of juvenile innocence (2016, 87). The graphic novel opens as an adventure story that shows a bird-eye perspective of a modern city. A pointy-hatgreen-skinned-witch overflies it while a parachutist is hanging from her broom; she lets him fall, and suddenly, an enormous scary dog makes its appearance in a kaiju fashion. In the upcoming pages, the reader notices that those scenes were a product of the boy’s imagination who is playing with his toys, but this already sets the tone for the upcoming story. The excitement is contrasted by the fact that the child and his grandmother are wearing black, and the following panels evoke their grievance after the funeral they had just attended. The actions are elongated throughout a few silent pages; the scene ends with an outside long-shot view of the house where the grandmother is holding his grandchild, who repeats: “it’s not fair” (Bagieu 2020, 9). The tragedies do not finish there. While the boy is building a treehouse, he experiences the first encounter with a witch, and even if the child manages to climb higher to protect himself, he is next portrayed crying and holding on to a branch until night-time when his grandmother finds and comforts him. Shortly afterwards, the elder suffers from a cough attack and the boy is the one responsible for calling the doctor. He is then portrayed sitting on the floor outside of her grandmother’s room, looking extremely worried and waiting for the doctor to let him in. Throughout these events, the boy is obliged to behave more maturely than a regular eight-year-old because the roles between guardian and minor get reversed. According to a study concerning grandparents that become their grandchildren’s primary caregivers, there are many challenges that they have to face depending on factors such as “age, poverty, illness/disability, parenting alone, lower educational level; the length of time since they have parented; the effect of prior adversities on the children, which demand more than ordinary parenting skills; elevated levels of carer stress and inadequate support” (Hunt 2018, 2–3). The grandmother in the graphic novel must take care of her grandson after both have lost someone important in their lives; they do not only have to adapt to a new living situation but also face the threat of the witches with physical impairments, the elder due to her delicate health and the grandson in his new shape as a mouse-boy. These factors create a precarious condition for both from the start that increases as the story moves forward. Once they arrive at the Magnificent Hotel, the usual relationship gets restored for a moment when the grandmother surprises her grandson with two pet mice. The child’s imagination is again depicted through a cartoonish splash page portraying the boy as a ringmaster while the mice are

38  María Augusta Albuja Aguilar performing and doing acrobatics. However, the tension rapidly increases as the narrative focalizes on the boy and through the following scenes, the reader experiences the world as a scared but brave child. For example, when he goes incognito, wearing a hoodie not to be identified while he steals cheese from the buffet for his pets and moves around the hotel looking for a safe place to train the mice. This place turns out to be the RSPCC meeting, and as soon as the boy notices that the attendants are not women but monstrous creatures, Bagieu inserts a close-up to his sweating forehead and concerned gaze. From his hiding place, he witnesses the girl’s metamorphosis into a mouse, which is represented slowly and painfully through various panels covering a page. Childhood precarity in the narrative is not only seen from the kids’ perspective but also shown through small and vulnerable animal’s eyes once they are transformed into mice (Figure 2.2). Even shocked, the mouse-boy manages to escape and find his mice pets, who run away terrified as soon as they recognize him. This midway form serves as an allegory to puberty that implies unexpected physical and psychological changes for the young person who is no longer considered a child nor a grown-up by a society that encourages adult normativity and relegates anything regarded as infantile. Therefore, the girl that was previously transformed is the first one to show empathy to the mouse-boy once she finds him feeling sorry for himself because she is the only one that can entirely relate to his new condition. At this point, the setting is widened and has more obstacles as the focalization directs towards the mouse-children. Not only do they have trouble navigating the hotel’s corridors and staircases and avoiding the guests’ luggage and footsteps, but also unbind a cry of alarm from anyone that lays an eye on them. Through the mouse embodiment, the witches have given the children an enemy façade in front of any adult that walks by them. Besides, no one can hear them speak because their voices are soft now which works as a metaphor for children feeling voiceless and unheard in a world ruled by grown-ups where “they are undefended because they are more vulnerable so that violence can be more easily perpetrated, remaining unreported” (Calloni 2016, 81). The grandmother is an exception and the representation of the benevolent adult who truly places the best interest of the child first because she does what most grown-ups usually do not, which is acknowledging the child’s opinions and suggestions (Curtis 2014, 172–173). This is notable when the mouse-children explain to her the plan to defeat the witches (see Figure 2.3); even in their new form, she respects their desires and needs and does everything she can to help them steal the formula from the Grand High Witch’s room and add to the witches’ soup. Once again, Bagieu represents the dangerous mission from the mousechild perspective with all the risks this entangles. When the mouse-boy arrives in the hotel’s kitchen, the scene is represented as a horror story through panels in diverse geometric forms, depicting fire, smoke, animals being cut and boiled, and even a skull ring on the finger of one of the cooks,

Oppressive Structures and Childhood Precarity in The Witches  39

Figure 2.3  The mouse-boy and girl discuss the plan with Grandma (Bagieu 2020, 189). Source: From The Witches: The Graphic Novel. New York: Scholastic.

as well as big scary shadows. This part of the story ends in a cliff-hanger, with the mouse-boy escaping from a big ox-shaped knife and instantly portrayed surrounded by blood. The graphic novel keeps the suspense because the next scene depicts the grandmother accompanying the mouse-girl to see her parents.

40  María Augusta Albuja Aguilar Adult hypocrisy is exposed when for their child’s astonishment, the Jenkins arrive from the casino holding cocktails, even though they have told their daughter they went to yoga and do not drink. The professors seem shocked when they see their child in her new shape while she gently explains to them what happened, a scene that could serve as an allegory for parents having difficulty understanding something unexpected about their children, but in the end, welcoming them as they are. According to Zipes, “mistreatment of young people and misunderstandings can only be countered by the wise nurturing of young children and the empathetic comprehension of the problems the young face as they strive to gain an understanding of their situations” (2017, 76). One of the last scenes of the comic portrays these views when the Jenkins arrive at grandma’s house so their mouse-daughter can see her friend, who is not only alive—since the cook only cut off his tail—but was also successful executing their plan and turning the witches into rats in the hotel’s dining hall. Nikolajeva coined the term aetonormativity to infer that in Children’s Literature, adulthood is often viewed as the norm, whereas children’s resistance to conform to those standards as the deviant (2009, 16). Adults’ privilege to exercise arbitrary power—political, socioeconomic, cultural, physical, and psychological—over children create the pattern for this unequal age-based relationship. In this graphic novel, the adult/child imbalance is accentuated by the fact that the witches have magical power and so, the story also references the sorcerer’s rebellious apprentice narrative where the young character is humiliated but “defeats a tyrannical and demonic master by using the magician’s own magic” (Zipes 2017, 7). This tale type shows the metamorphosis of both the child and the evil sorcerer into animals through their combat (Zipes 2017, 22), which according to Zipes, is still relevant because it emphasizes “the necessity for young people to learn how to shape-shift, mutate, and transform so that they will not be sacrificed or killed by the insidious forces seeking to control them” (2017, 42). The ending defeats adult normativity because the characters are never going to comply with growing up requirements per se and would remain subversive to adult oppression, and hence, this story turns the mouse-children’s success into a win for the readers as it translates the young audience fears, inspiring resilience and self-acceptance in them (Curtis 2014, 174–175). Even if, in the end, both children are still mice, they have found a noble mission for their new shortened precarious lives.

Facing precarious representation According to Kérckhy and McAra, the apparent mutual exclusion between text and images along art history is an idea rooted in patriarchal master narratives, while “intermedial fusions remain loaded with political and ethical issues that are in search of sites of resistance for marginalised, othered social subjects and meanings” (2017, 218). For instance, female comic creators who

Oppressive Structures and Childhood Precarity in The Witches  41 focus on childhood, bodies and trauma, which are concepts typically relegated to the private sphere, use their inventive to portray women’s unspeakable and unimaginable experiences elevating them to the political and collective realm (Chute 2008, 259). In an interview, Bagieu comments on how she perceived that most western comics were originally aimed at a young male audience while women and girls’ representation was scarce, and even if this has changed somehow, the author points out how women authors have to be trailblazers because for a long time they were minor subjects, and their topics were easily disregarded (Elzas and Hird 2020). In this sense, the author brings the skills that characterize her previous works to The Witches: A Graphic Novel, in which she plays in different ways to face that precarious representation. As mentioned before, Dahl’s novel has been accused of sexism not only because the witches are portrayed as women that hate children but also because relating women to witchcraft has unfairly served as a justification for gender violence throughout history. The graphic novel does not overlook these connotations and when the grandmother first tells the boy about the witches, a page is dedicated to illustrating how rebellious women were accused of having evil powers, which is ironically emphasized when the boy asks: “So, you mean they may have called YOU a witch?” (Bagieu 2020, 34). The grandmother explains how activities like getting together with your friends or decisions like remaining unmarried used to be considered as causals for sorcery charges, adding “oddly enough, old men were never accused” (Bagieu 2020, 34). The mocking tone of the text and the images of the witchcraft allegations, including an illustration of the grandmother dancing with a cartoonish devil, place the reader on a feminist rendition. The Witches: A Graphic Novel portrays a female world where the protagonist roles are reclaimed by the grandmother and the mouse-girl as heroines, and the villains are witches disguised as women. On the other hand, the male characters—grandma’s doctor, the hotel manager and other employees, as well as the cooks and servants and the taxi driver—are not only secondary but portrayed as white, clueless, incompetent, scared of the mice and only placed there to serve the interests of the female characters. The mouse-boy stands out because he is not only portrayed as a non-white child—and later as a brown mouse, which is interesting in terms of politics of representation—but also since he is clever, efficient, brave, and, as Duncan points out, his metamorphosis eliminates the possibility of an ascription to adult gender norms and decentres the attention from humans providing a more ethical context where different species cohabit, a concept endorsed by posthumanism feminist theory (2014, 61, 64–65). In this sense, if we read this oeuvre from a feminist perspective, and considering that the witches, as Duncan suggests, do not have any interest in emasculating adult males (2014, 61), these characters’ representation in the graphic novel could be compared to liberal feminism as the witches, and especially the Grand High Witch, are interested in keeping patriarchal violent and hierarchical

42  María Augusta Albuja Aguilar structures to achieve their goals and gain power as it has already been examined. On the contrary, the grandmother and the girl—Bagieu’s entire invention and inclusion—are complex female characters that do not ascribe to the angel or vixen archetypes; but, as the author points out, they are good, strong, brave and funny women (Elzas and Hird 2020). In this regard, the elder is not portrayed as a traditional and conservative grandmother but as an open-minded, rebellious and self-reliant woman who came to live with her grandson only after his parents’ death; she smokes and does not mind telling children the truth even if it is scary, breaking the rules in the hotel or helping the mouse-children with anything she has at her disposal—like carrying them inside her purple hair or using her tights as their parachute, and later even, creating a home that accommodates the mouse-boy’s needs. At the same time, the girl, as the daughter of a couple of professors, speaks with sophistication and displays a distinct cleverness in her actions. She is also emotionally mature, which can be reckoned with when she encourages the mouse-boy to show vulnerability when they are first facing their new condition and when she assumes the responsibility of protecting him during the plan execution as she is slightly older. Her bravery is again manifested when she defends herself against the witches who make fun and bully her when she is serving as their literal lab rat and later while introducing her new form to her parents. Therefore, both characters representation as empowered women working with a non-white boy, even with the degrees of oppression they could experience due to their gender, ages, race and ethnicity, which situates each one of them in particular precarious conditions, could be related to posthumanism—a philosophy that encourages alliances and interdependence between human and non-human beings in a collective world (Duncan 2014, 68)—and radical intersectional feminism, as they work together to dismantle patriarchal oppressive structures, including a precarious representation in comics.

Conclusion This study draws from concepts and theories that relate precarity to the oppressive structures that place certain populations in violent and fearful living conditions, which can be aggravated as per their age, gender, race and ethnicity. In this sense, we have discussed how fairy tales, especially their renditions, can translate what could happen in the private sphere to vulnerable subjects, which sometimes remain unreported and disregarded at a public and larger scope—much like women experiences that for years were barely represented in comics. As it has been argued, Bagieu’s graphic novel unfolds different meanings throughout the narrative thanks to the inventive visual resources the author employs that relate the witches, as classic fairy tale characters, with contemporary patriarchal oppressive structures such as authoritarianism, capitalism and

Oppressive Structures and Childhood Precarity in The Witches  43 the use of force, which make them victims too, as well as liberal feminism. On the other hand, the mouse-children’s precarious experience is represented as an allegory of adult power that makes children feel suppressed, voiceless, neglected and mistreated—which can be worsened if they are non-white males. As a result, Bagieu appropriates Dahl’s story and offers a female-led world that encourages posthumanism and intersectional feminism with a rebellious elder, her caring grandson and a wise girl on top. Brenner suggests that “reading comics requires self-direction,” but authors leave hints to lead the audience through the page (2015, 258). Bagieu plays with colour, display, perspectives, free-style and other artistic techniques that engage the audience in a narrative packed with dark humour that portrays a David vs. Goliath unfair world where vulnerable characters are also brave and resilient, inspiring the young readers to own their transformations and even challenge their precarious circumstances by retelling their version of the story.

References Bagieu, Pénélope. 2020. The Witches: The Graphic Novel. New York: Scholastic. Brenner, Robin. 2015. “Comics and Graphic Novels.” Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature, no. 2003. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203843543. ch18 Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War. London, Brooklyn: Verso. Calloni, Marina. 2016. “Images of Fear in Political Philosophy and Fairy Tales: Linking Private Abuse to Political Violence in Human Rights Discourse.” Journal of International Political Theory 12 (1): 67–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088215612230 Chute, Hillary. 2008. “Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative.” PMLA 123 (2): 452–465. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2008.123.2.452 Cogan Thacker, Deborah. 2012. “Fairy Tale and Anti-Fairy Tale: Roald Dahl and the Telling Power of Stories.” In Roald Dahl, edited by Ann Alston and Catherine Butler, 14–30. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Curtis, James M. 2014. “‘We Have a Great Task Ahead of Us!’: Child-Hate in Roald Dahl’s The Witches.” Children’s Literature in Education 45 (2): 166–177. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10583-013-9207-6 Dahl, Roald. 1983. The Witches. London: Penguin Random House. Duncan, Taine. 2014. “Of Mice And (Posthu)Man Roald Dahl’s The Witches and Ethics beyond Humanism.” In Roald Dahl and Philosophy: A Little Nonsense Now and Then, edited by Jacob M. Held, 59–71. Lanham, Maryland, Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield. Elzas, Sarah, and Alison Hird, hosts. 2020. “Gay Poet Polemic, French Touch for The Witches, & Roland Garros the Man” Spotlight on France (podcast). https://www.rfi.fr/ en/france/20201001-podcast-gay-poet-polemic-french-touch-for-the-witches-roalddahl-roland-garros-the-man-pantheon-rimbaud-verlaine-bagieu Hunt, Joan. 2018. “Grandparents as Substitute Parents in the UK.” Contemporary Social Science 13 (2): 175–186. https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2017.1417629 Kérchy, Anna, and Catriona McAra. 2017. “Introduction.” European Journal of English Studies 21 (3): 217–230. https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2017.1369270

44  María Augusta Albuja Aguilar Kukkonen, Karin. 2013. Contemporary Comics Storytelling. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. Nikolajeva, Maria. 2009. “Theory, Post-Theory, and Aetonormative Theory.” Neohelicon 36 (1): 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-1002-4 Sanders, Julie. 2016. Adaptation and Appropriation. Oxon, New York: Routledge. Serafini, Frank, Danielle Kachorsky, and Stephanie Reid. 2018. “Revisiting the Multimodal Nature of Children’s Literature.” Language Arts 95 (5): 311. Zipes, Jack. 2017. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Harry Potter and Why Magic Matters.” In The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: An Anthology of Magical Tales, edited by Jack Zipes, 1–82. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

3

Journey to Adulthood Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Inio Asano’s Goodnight Punpun José Andrés Santiago

Introduction1 Outside Japan, manga is usually published in small paperback volumes, consisting of roughly 200 pages, humbly printed in black and white. However, manga is inherently bound to the publishing duo formed by mangashi serialized magazines and tankōbon volumes. Manga industry’s production, dissemination, and monetization model, as we know it today, has little evolved since the 1970s, aside from reasonable changes in line with the course of time. Relying mostly on story manga—long serialized graphic narratives—usually published in mangashi on a weekly or monthly basis, this publishing system has been running since the late 1950s (Sho n ̄ en Magazine by Kodansha and Sho n ̄ en Sunday by Shogakukan), strengthened with the arrival of the Weekly Shōnen Jump (by Shueisha in 1968) and the emergence of the tankōbon format, and still accounts for the majority of sales today (Berndt and Berndt 2015, 227–228). Moreover, this dual strategy has not only defined manga’s publishing system, but it is also responsible for many of the aesthetic choices and formal innovations (page layout, panel connections, narrative and visual pace, etc.) over the last fifty years. Such innovations have ultimately become many of manga’s most defining traits; distinctive visual-narrative features that make manga such a unique medium. Story manga mainstream narratives can go on being published for several years or decades, reaching thousands of pages and dozens—or even hundreds— of tankōbon collected volumes. Such long serializations also influence how characters are designed and developed over the years. One of the most salient manga traits is the conventionalization of characters, depicting bodily features and facial expressions equally conventionalized. These repeated elements, rather than being a hindrance to the reader, allow for an emotional engagement with the characters through different works, sharing similar genres and plots, expanding the metafictional universes shaped by these narratives. Moreover, lengthy series allow for the characters’ emotional and psychological growth— that usually evolve over the years together with their growing readers—becoming one of manga’s characters most defining traits, especially when compared with the unchanging heroes from other major global comics markets. Since most characters and works are created by a single author—albeit the editor and DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-5

46  José Andrés Santiago assistants play an important role—the psychological development of these characters mostly rests on the mangaka. Manga has a long tradition of narratives focused on the daily life and the social and personal struggles of youth, dating back to the gekiga 2 artists of the late 1950s and 1960s. Nowadays, Japan is a country with a low unemployment rate and a high standard of living, but with an underlying conflict between youth’s personal expectations and what society asks from them. Inio Asano (Ishioka b.1980) is an artist well known through his sliceof-life seinen3 manga, in which he usually deals with the struggles of youth and the everyday life of his characters, using a realistic graphic style—with meticulous drawing and vividly rendered backgrounds—but also with a down-to-earth approach that somewhat moves away from the happy ending of mainstream shōnen manga. Asano won the first prize in the 2001 GX competition for young manga artists, and his work is defined by a realistic approach to human emotions and the ongoing struggle between his characters and the world they live in. Goodnight Punpun (Oyasumi Punpun, Shogakukan, 2007–2013) is his longest and most introspective manga so far. Goodnight Punpun is a coming-of-age drama, following Punpun’s painful journey from childhood to adult life—first love, family disputes, broken friendship, sexual awakening, work, social expectations, etc.—shaped by the protagonist’s shy nature. Goodnight Punpun also embraces Asano’s signature style: detailed backgrounds; photographic sources; stylized characters; references to Japanese popular culture; nihilistic, subjectivist and existentialist ideas; and a realistic depiction of everyday issues without a sugar-coated approach. However, the most striking element is the design of Punpun and his family—portrayed as cartoonish and poorly drawn birds— which ultimately allows Asano to convey a vast array of emotions beyond the naturalistic features of the other characters. This chapter addresses Goodnight Punpun as a case study, attending to its formal aspects and manga’s material specificity and paying special attention to Punpun’s graphic traits as a way to describe his psyche—his morphing shape responding to an emotional state—while he comes to terms with his own persona. Asano’s aesthetic choice with regard to the protagonist and his family allows for a deeper empathic connection with the reader. The realistic facial expressions of most of the human characters—sometimes awkward, distorted, and histrionic—contrast with the cartoonish style in which Punpun and his family are depicted. However, the latter conveys the protagonists’ emotions more effectively by using pictogrammatic symbols4 (Wilde 2020, 72) and thus allowing the reader to put themselves in their shoes. Moreover, the cartoonish appearance helps to portray appalling situations that would otherwise be difficult to deal with for the reader (Asano cited in Mangabrog 2014). Finally, from an aesthetic and material point of view, the simplicity of Punpun’s design makes it possible to portray his emotional state, introducing paralinguistic information that could not be conveyed in any other way.

Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Goodnight Punpun  47

Slice-of-life The stagnation of the Japanese economy since the early 1990s following the burst of the baburu keiki (economic bubble) had enormous social effects and changed the way a whole generation of Japanese young people understood the traditional employment dynamics (Allison 2015, 36–37; Gagné 2020, 379, 383). Moreover, it also forced them to reshape and come to terms with their expectations for the future. After decades where good job prospects were given for granted, the financial uncertainty became a big obstacle to overcome in order to achieve a fulfilling life. Popularly referred as Japan Inc., post-war Japanese economic and social welfare was grounded on three intertwined pillars: family, corporation, and school (Allison 2015, 37; Allison 2013, 45). In post-war Japan, the workplace was like a family, encouraging the widespread assumption of people attaching to a company until retirement. In the early 1970s, three out of four household heads were white-collar workers—salarymen—with a good standard of living (Allison 2015, 38). Ultimately, Japan Inc. sustained the idea that working hard every day would secure a better future. However, after the 1990s economic recession and the transformation of the family-corporate system (Gagné 2020, 385), the security from the previous decades, that had largely been taken for granted, was no more. For many people, this came as a shift and a major blow to Japanese ethos. Suddenly, the 1990s became “a ‘glacial age of hiring,’ [and] youth were particularly hard hit, becoming the ‘Lost Generation’ in Japan’s ‘Lost Decade’” (Allison 2015, 41–42). The post-war corporate-family system changed into different forms of precarious employment (Gagné 2020, 381). By the second decade of the 21st century, one in three Japanese workers—rising to 50% in the case of young people—were irregular workers, such as sub-contracted workers or doing a one-off short-term precarious job (Allison 2015, 43). This situation became particularly challenging for women for whom irregular work came on top of the worst gendered wage disparity in the developed world (Kano 2015). Tragically, for some of these young people, life goes by as a cycle of endless days, searching for temporary—usually demanding and degrading—jobs, living on fast food, and sleeping at net cafes. In a country that worships work, being jobless and unproductive became a new form of stigma (Akagi quoted in Allison 2013, 59–60). Financial precarity became social precariousness since the failure to secure a job prevented them from starting a family or fulfilling many of the usual expectations of adulthood, rendering them expendable members of society—a belief that (having undermined their self-esteem) many of these young people ended up sharing. Karin Amamiya refers to this precariousness as ikizurasa (lit. hardship of life), since she understands that this issue goes beyond financial insecurity and poverty but also involves social, emotional, and human dynamics (Amamiya quoted in Allison 2013, 65). As Allison explains: “Amamiya portrays the ‘hardship of life’ as an insecurity that is not only material but also ontological. It carries with it

48  José Andrés Santiago a sense of existential emptiness and social negation.” (2013, 65). In this regard, Amamiya’s notion is close to Butler’s idea of precariousness (Butler 2004, 2009, 2012), acknowledging ikizurasa as a condition potentially inherent to every human being. In contemporary Japan, frustration, disaffection, and anxiety have led to precariousness and grief, sometimes dealt with in the shape of social isolation and secludedness—with solitary forms of human withdrawal such as hikikomori—, leading to the notion of Japan as a “relationless society” (Allison 2015, 37, 39, 45); and other times expressed as self-harm—with a dramatic upsurge in suicides since the late 1990s—or even violence— random violent attacks and domestic terrorism—. At the same time, the arrival of the Internet has forever changed the way millennials learn, socialize, and communicate among themselves, highlighting the difficulties young people face in order to meet new friends, have a sentimental relationship, explore their sexuality, or deal with loneliness, anxiety, or depression— especially in a society where many of these issues were hardly spoken out loud—. As a result, Japanese youth now face the tensions between a social and employment system that is no longer working for them while finding their place as part of the surrounding world. Many of these social, emotional and employment challenges are recurring topics usually addressed in Inio Asano’s manga series—The End of The World and Before Dawn (2005), Solanin (2006), and even Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction (2014), among other titles—whether they become the main issue in the story or just an underlying plot set in the background. Asano, born in 1980—thus, a millennial himself—has been able to accurately portray this social anguish and hardship—ikizurasa—ultimately defined by a pronounced gap between expectations and needs, either individual or collective. In many of his manga series—like A Girl on the Shore (2009) or Goodnight Punpun (2007)— Asano depicts everyday life challenges, but he also deals with dark topics like domestic violence, over-sexualization of sentimental relationships, mental illness or even suicide—a topic on which he has focused in the past (Asano 2020, 126). Nevertheless, Asano does not feel the need to provide an answer to those issues nor face them in the cheerful encouraging way expected from ‘Jumpspirited’ shōnen manga, as “his works are rife with hints of death and futility” (Ozaki 2010). On a visual level, Asano’s works—being Goodnight Punpun just a prominent example—stand out due to the realistic drawing style, combining naturalistic representations of the characters and accurate and highly detailed depictions of backgrounds and perspectives. Sometimes regarded as too cold and shallow (Ozaki 2010), Asano’s drawing style relies heavily in the use of photographs for the backgrounds and 3D computer graphics to properly render perspectives of both building exteriors and—most importantly—indoor spaces so that these rooms are consistent regardless of the angle from which the action is depicted (Asano 2020, 53–54, 147). Likewise, most outdoor spaces are based on actual photographs, digitally switched to black and white

Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Goodnight Punpun  49 and printed, so his assistants can draw the outlines and intricate details. However, Asano still carries out most of the final layout by himself (Asano quoted in Mangabrog 2015), drawing all the characters, scanning the backgrounds, and digitally composing the final pages together (Asano cited in Cakes 2013). Over the years, many of Asano’s manga works have been labelled as “sliceof-life,” understood as a realistic representation of mundane, everyday life experiences. Slice-of-life stories usually involve the lack of an apparently intentional underlying storyline—beyond a diachronic depiction of events—binding together the narrative—as opposed to the classic beginning, crux, and denouement structure—, and often presenting an open ending. In truth, the interest in Asano’s manga works lies not as much in the events as in his characters, often providing an engaging narrative from a seemingly dull set of events. Recalling a conversation with a fellow mangaka and assistant, Asano highlights in his diary the importance of characters in manga since the very essence of manga is to “portray people” (Asano 2020, 214) and how authors—especially those whose manga is targeted to young readers—are expected to adopt a critical vision with regard to society (Asano 2020, 207). However, this simple statement hides one of the most important contradictions in Asano’s manga works. When he addresses the reasons behind mainstream manga popularity—specially shōnen manga—Asano insists on the importance of building up characters in a cheerful, optimistic way that leaves younger readers with a good feeling at the end, as he states: “People’s lives are not like in a manga; that’s precisely what makes them interesting” (Asano 2020, 214). Asano even came to say that he was more interested in the people drawing manga that the actual stories coming alive from those drawings, regardless of how anti-manga this statement may seem. Unsurprisingly, he has tagged himself as a Trojan horse of sorts with regard to manga—“I draw manga to kill manga” (Asano 2020, 214)—subverting with his slice-of-life, seemingly uninteresting stories, many of the usual manga plot conventions. Concerning Goodnight Punpun, Asano explains: “In the history of manga, there’s almost a format of how you’re supposed to make a manga. This series was in part my attempt at seeing how much of that I could destroy—which is why I started off with a romantic comedy trope, just to see how chaotic I could make it from there” (Asano quoted in Mangabrog 2014). Be that as it may, Asano ultimately embraces and engages in manga’s business tactics, despite his seeming disdain for manga’s marketability; as “[he does] not categorically reject commercialism but rather employ it as a tool to reach readers, as their serializations in manga magazines indicate” (Berndt 2014, 207). Goodnight Punpun is Asano’s longest manga to date. Lasting for over seven years, it was first serialized in the Weekly Young Sunday magazine (Shogakukan) between 2007 and 2008, and later in Big Comic Spirits from 2008 to 2013— both of them labelled as seinen magazines and thus intended for young male readers—. Comprising an overall of 147 chapters, Goodnight Punpun was collected and published in thirteen tankōbon volumes.5 From the very beginning,

50  José Andrés Santiago Asano planned to tell “the story of this boy named Punpun as he grew up, spanning roughly ten years.” (Asano quoted in Mangabrog 2014). Goodnight Punpun is not only Asano’s longest story manga so far, but also his most distinctive work, for two reasons. Firstly, because it departs from his previous success, Solanin, and it does so with a moderate dose of bitterness. Goodnight Punpun is presented as a coming-of-age story, but as the set of events progresses it becomes a much darker and adult narrative, dealing with issues such as bullying, loneliness, domestic abuse, divorce, the loss of a parent, unemployment, sexual awakening, toxic social and sentimental relationships, and even murder; all of them portrayed with a crudeness that, for many readers, led to rejection and discomfort, ultimately being described as utsumanga—a neologism that could be roughly translated as “depressing manga” (Asano quoted in Mangabrog 2014). Faced with the challenge of portraying some horrendous and despicable actions by regular characters, Asano stated “I believe that seinen magazines are for manga readers and artists who are mature enough to accept immorality. Punpun was entirely made in that vein” (Asano quoted in Mangabrog 2014). Seen from the perspective of mainstream “feel-good” shōnen narratives, the events described in Goodnight Punpun can indeed trigger a sense of discomfort in the reader. However, seinen manga is but the heir of 1960s and 70s gekiga, and gekiga’s dramatic and unsweetened topics—together with its formal achievements—have long been absorbed by manga industry and are now part of the mainstream (Berndt 2006, 107; Berndt 2007, 3). With this in mind, Goodnight Punpun can indeed be regarded as an “adult manga” (cf. Berndt 2006). According to Berndt, adult refers less to a matter of content and themes—sex, violence, social awareness—but to “a mode of expression and a way of reading” (2006, 109), in line with Asano’s previous quote with regard to seinen manga artists and readership. Asano may label his series as anti-manga, but Goodnight Punpun ultimately highlights manga’s critical potential, even when it becomes part of the mainstream. Paraphrasing Berndt on Maruo: [Asano’s comics] are “adult” not just because they offer blatant sex scenes (…) but rather because they confront us with inextricable, highly mediated ambiguities. Here, the infantile as irresponsible and excessive is part of the adult, and the adult is part of the child-like perspective insofar as these stories do not settle for unequivocal messages. (…) [Asano’s] comics question the very premises of morality, denying the reader happy-endings and thus a comforting closure. (Berndt 2006, 111)6 The second reason why Goodnight Punpun stands out among Asano’s already remarkable works is that the main character (Punpun) and his family are portrayed as cartoonish birds, while the rest of the characters in the manga appear as humans, drawn in Asano’s usual naturalistic style. This bold aesthetic choice will be analyzed in the last section of this chapter, trying to highlight why a

Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Goodnight Punpun  51 set of seemingly more inexpressive characters can, in fact, depict a larger array of feelings—not only conveyable through facial expressions but also depicting their inner emotional state—and allow for a deeper empathic connection with the reader. All in all, the combination of the three key aspects pointed out in this section—realistic drawing, unsweetened everyday issues, and placing emphasis on characters rather than plots—ultimately defines Asano’s signature style.

Cartooning and “otherness” in Goodnight Punpun Over the past several decades, Japanese Visual Language (JVL)—the system of graphic representation used in Japanese “manga”—has become one of the most recognizable styles of representation in the world […] Even more important for the conception of drawing as a visual language, the stereotypic style of JVL extends beyond manga into nearly all aspects of visual culture. (Cohn 2013, 153) Manga’s visual style and most recognizable traits have evolved parallel to other major international markets since the 1950s, with little influence from outside Japan, resulting in what Neil Cohn calls “Japanese Visual Language” (JVS)—a set of conventions with unique traits apart from other visual languages (Cohn 2013, 153–154)—. While manga visual style and character design cannot be reduced to a set of conventionalized features, having a multitude of different visual approaches by an equally large number of authors, it is true that manga shares a set of elements (Cohn 2013, 155) among works that ultimately define the notion of the mangaesque (Berndt 2012, 149). This set of highly conventionalized pictogrammatic symbols, including elements like the sweat drops to convey discomfort, the throbbing vein in the temple to show anger, or the occasional gush of blood coming out of the nose to represent sexual arousal, among many other similar features, have been labelled under different names broadly applied to comics, such as “multi-modal metaphors” (Forceville 2009), comicana (Walker 1980), “bound morphemes” (Cohn 2013), etc. Other kinds of visual tropes that convey a particular mood or emotional state—such as backgrounds with flowers or sparkles in shōjo narratives—are also distinctive to manga. Nevertheless, the set of visual metaphors used in facial expressions and body language is extensive enough to define a visual language of their own (Cohn 2013, 153–159), and most readers already recognize these as an inherent part of the vocabulary of manga. Many of these visual metaphors have grown so far from their original source that their meaning has been transformed, yet through repetition, they have become highly conventionalized symbols, which can be applied outside their original context and still remain understandable to any regular manga reader (Cohn 2013, 157). Ultimately, this progressively abstracting process allows them, to a certain extent, to gain the status of linguistic symbols (McCloud 1993, 129; Wilde 2020, 72).

52  José Andrés Santiago Manga’s character design also shares a broad usage of conventionalized traits, such as face shape, hairstyle, big eyes, etc. However, in order to address Asano’s characters, suppletion (Cohn 2013, 158)—one of the visual resources often used in manga—must be also taken into consideration. According to Hideki Ono, editor of the Anime Style magazine, the secret behind the design of manga characters lies in the distinction and suppletion of the superficial elements; in not representing all the features of the human body with equal importance but in favouring those aspects or traits that help define the character, at the expense of those others that might seem unnecessary for the understanding of the personage (Ono cited in Kelts 2007, 214). Some of Ono’s ideas regarding character design in manga connect with the notion of “iconic abstraction” used by McCloud (1993, 50) and the dual approach to characters taken by Asano in Goodnight Punpun. While the supporting characters are drawn in a realistic way in order to depict Punpun and his family members, Asano relies on a high degree of abstraction, by means of cartooning and using an abundance of visual metaphors proper to JVL. The subject of cartooning has been largely discussed in the academic field of comics studies, notably due to the contribution of the comics artist Scott McCloud, who dealt extensively with the subject in the second chapter— focused on pictorial icons—of the well-known book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993). Although McCloud’s work may raise some concerns from an academic perspective—and ought to be referenced with caution and certain restraint—it is nonetheless true that his attempt to address this issue led to further debate on cartooning. McCloud defines cartooning as “a form of amplification through simplification. When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning’, an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t” (McCloud 1993, 30). In a certain way, drawing on Ono’s statement, from a visual form point of view, McCloud is suggesting that the selective removal of elements—focusing on the eyes and mouth and exaggerating those features which are most distinctive, at the expense of those being less iconic—allows for a greater emotional connection with the reader. Simply put, McCloud states that in a realistic depiction, the reader sees a given character, but in a cartoon, they see—or rather project—themselves, leading towards universal identification (McCloud 1993, 36). Thus, McCloud’s thesis would indicate that a more abstract facial representation—away from realistic naturalism—allows the reader to enter the fictional world of the narrative and identify themselves with the character, “wearing” the character itself as if it was a costume or a mask. On the contrary, according to McCloud’s argument, realistic—or photorealistic—characters are perceived by the reader as distinct characters—thus objectifying them—, not easy to relate to, and therefore they do not allow for an empathetic connection on the same level as cartoon-like designs. Or as McCloud himself explains: “Through traditional realism, the comics artist can portray the world without, and through the cartoon, the world within” (1993, 41).

Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Goodnight Punpun  53 When it comes to Goodnight Punpun, regular characters are depicted according to Asano’s signature style: realistic representation of facial expressions, paying attention to detail rather than suppressing superficial aspects. However, Punpun and his kin are portrayed as naïve, cartoonish chicks. This distinctness between Punpun’s family and the rest of the human protagonists applies not only to the design of the characters themselves but also to the way in which many of the multimodal metaphors of manga are used throughout the series. Some of the characters do share conventionalized elements—such as the smile and squinted eyes (e.g., Aiko’s character)—or suppletion (Cohn 2013, 158) when a pose similar to Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream is adopted to show surprise or terror (understood in a non-literal sense but with comic intent in the face of unexpected situations)—. However, conventionalized pictogrammatic symbols are usually restricted to Punpun and his relatives, thus emphasizing the overall dichotomy between realism and cartooning. Consequently, cartooning allows the reader to identify themselves more easily with Punpun and to empathically connect with the character, as opposed to the detachment brought about by the realistic—and therefore colder and more crudely descriptive—approach to the characters and the world they inhabit. This closeness and emotional connections are heightened by the fact that Punpun does not speak directly through speech balloons but through black panels, making it often difficult to differentiate whether he is interacting with another character or whether these are his (unspoken) thoughts, and he is engaged in a dialogue of sorts with himself. This ambiguous way of using the dialogues allows for different degrees of verbal communication to coexist with various levels of subjectivity. The text panels, narrated in the first person, usually provide information not implied by the images and dialogues, but as these do not exist in the case of Punpun’s character, they simultaneously perform as speech balloons—referring to the ongoing situation and providing a more direct and immediate information—, intentionally playing with such ambiguity. “In other words, this split between written and visual discourse can allow for the simultaneity of subjectivity (in the text) and objectivity (in the image) and vice versa” (Cuba 2015, 256). Moreover, the effect Asano seeks is to enhance the empathic connection between Punpun and the reader, hence strengthening the impact achieved through cartooning, “so it becomes a conversation between the reader and the character almost” (Asano quoted in Alverson 2018). This effect is increased by means of the masking effect, a typical resource in comics but one that is particularly noteworthy in the case of manga. McCloud (1993, 43–44) discusses in depth the importance of this graphical-narrative resource in manga. Nevertheless, in Goodnight Punpun, Asano takes this device to unexpected heights through the use of photo-realistic backgrounds—drawn from actual photographs—and 3D rendered interiors. Moreover, Asano goes so far as to play with the dichotomy between cartooning and realism when developing Punpun’s very character. In the early volumes, Punpun appears as a roughly sketched, badly drawn bird; however, as the narrative unfolds, his body

54  José Andrés Santiago

Figure 3.1  P unpun’s cartoonish design at different stages in the series. © 2007 INIO ASANO/SHOGAKUK AN.

gradually evolves and morphs into different shapes to expand the range of emotions conveyed by the protagonist (see Figure 3.1). In the early volumes, Punpun’s depiction is extremely minimalistic and stylized, achieving a high degree of abstraction, but as the story progresses, Punpun’s body is drawn in a more realistic way, while only the face retains the cartoon style of the original chicken. This transformation plays a dual role; on the one hand, Asano relies on a realistic body with a cartoon head to show

Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Goodnight Punpun  55 the character’s maturation. As he grows up and abandons his childish psyche to develop his own personality, two sides of his character coexist his true self—which was fully visible when he was a child—and his “persona” or public self—the way he presents himself to others, which responds to a set of expectations placed on him by society. On the other hand, Asano took this creative aesthetic choice to help with the storytelling in some scenes. “With something like a hug, when it’s just Punpun and these simple little stick arms, it loses some of the effectiveness, it loses some of that tension. So along the way I started incorporating some of that realism” (Asano quoted in Alverson 2018). Nonetheless, Punpun’s face remains cartoonish and stylized all the time, even when his body has a realistic graphic style, similar to the other supporting characters. Sometimes it may look like a blank canvas, but this inexpressiveness is intended to soften the heinous situations in which Punpun gets involved—sexual assault, gender-based violence, murder, assault—while allowing the reader to remain emotionally engaged with the character. In chapter 77 (volume 7), after a series of emotional bumps that sunk him into a depression, Punpun is shown in his room, lying on his futon, depicted as a simple tetrahedron. Without providing any additional information, Asano clearly implies to the reader that Punpun has hit rock bottom. Confined most of the time inside a tiny flat of barely 25 m 2, he lives alone, with no employment or social life, frozen by his fear and inability to connect with others. His mind is empty of thoughts, and his personal and emotional existence has been reduced to the bare minimum. Not for nothing, the tetrahedron is the simplest shape of all polyhedra. Punpun’s geometric semblance lasts for several chapters till he finally opens up to a newfound friend. Interestingly, when it first appears, the tetrahedron is portrayed in a visually realistic way, as if it were a polished metal prism. When he stands up, the tetrahedron sprouts legs and arms rendered in a stick figure style, which allow him to interact with some surrounding elements. Moreover, even this tetrahedron look is subject to cartooning. When he is involved in comical situations, Asano turns Punpun into a plain triangle, outlined with the broken and irregular line expected from a roughly sketched drawing. When McCloud (1993, 51–52) addresses the “pictorial vocabulary of comics,” he illustrates his thesis with a triangle formed by three vertices: reality, language, and the picture plane—the latter being a visual realm of non-iconic abstraction where shapes, lines and colours exist, without any added meaning—. As character design goes, Punpun moves from the further edge on McCloud’s iconic pyramid of visual meaning—extremely iconic characters before they turn in to simple language—and the picture plane, whenever Punpun is reduced to basic shapes—like the tetrahedron. The degree of non-iconic abstraction in Punpun’s facial design shifts from top to bottom, but when it comes to his body—depicted both as a cartoon and a realistic way throughout the series—the range also varies enormously from left to right in the iconic content, from realism to cartooning (see Figure 3.2). In volume 11 (at the end of chapter 113), there is another noteworthy transformation of Punpun’s facial design. After Aiko chooses to move in with Punpun, she faces her stepmother, Mitsuko Tanaka, a deranged and abusive

56  José Andrés Santiago

Figure 3.2  Punpun’s categorization according to McCloud’s chart on pictorial vocabulary of comics.

woman who reacts violently and stabs Aiko with a large kitchen knife. Punpun intervenes and, after a struggle, strangles Mitsuko. At this point, Punpun’s body is depicted realistically, while his face is portrayed as a black figure with two horns. Then, Punpun says—in a black panel, not within a speech balloon—: “It’s all fine now.” The dissociation between textual and visual information in this scene is quite interesting. While Punpun’s statement has a certain heroic quality—after all, he has saved Aiko, even if he had to murder her mother to do so—, the almost demonic figure connotes a sinister and sordid undertone. In an interview in Mangabrog, Asano explains that the horns are a reference to the star-crossed lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi—represented by the stars of Vega and Altair—, from the Tanabata’s summer festival. According to Asano,

Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Goodnight Punpun  57 Punpun and Aiko represent Hikoboshi and Orihime,7 and “the horns Punpun eventually grows aren’t devil horns; Hikoboshi is also called the cowherd star, so those horns are supposed to be bull horns” (Asano quoted in Mangabrog 2014). Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to prevent the reader from making other kinds of connections in an almost unintentional way. Punpun’s horns do not appear at just any point in the story, but when the character’s actions begin to be considered objectionable from an adult point of view. The childish naivety of the little bird gives way to a character whose actions are wrong, or at least morally dubious. This demonic—and frightening, surrounded by darkness—depiction helps to expand the expressive range of the character without the need to add additional words.

Subverting conventions One of the key features of story manga is the potential of its characters to psychologically evolve. Because the stories often run for several years, the characters grow and mature along with the readers. This allows, in turn, for a greater involvement with the characters, especially when compared to some European or American comics, where the protagonists’ growth may not be as significant or simply does not take place. Sometimes, this personal maturation process is presented as a “hero’s journey,” in which the protagonist is originally introduced as a child who grows up to become who he really was meant to be and finds his purpose in life. In mainstream shōnen manga, these tales often become epic sagas of personal growth, combining the protagonist’s quest to achieve his dreams with his psychological maturation. In some way, when Asano speaks of transcending the usual codes of manga, this may also imply going beyond the traditional categorization of hero and anti-hero, bringing a closer depiction of everyday life. In Goodnight Punpun, Asano reinterprets the idea of the “hero’s journey” and unobtrusively portrays many of the problems afflicting Japanese youth with a grim approach, far from a sugar-coated ending. To do so, he relies on a highly recognizable graphic style which shares many of the conventionalized elements in manga but combined with a realistic depiction of characters and backgrounds that reinforce the idea of “otherness.” With regard to form, in Goodningt Punpun Asano has managed to balance the existing aesthetic dichotomy between the pursuit of greater visual realism and the metonymic abstraction of manga’s characters. Through Punpun’s naïf and cartoonish style, Asano has succeeded in exploring the potential of visual abstraction in manga while emotionally connecting with the reader, showing emotions and feelings—from the most heartfelt exhilaration to the deepest distress—that would be hard to convey with the naturalistic approach of the other characters. Inio Asano’s manga works have consistently addressed ikizurasa—the “hardship of life”—becoming a leading figure in portraying Japan’s “Lost Generation.” Outside Japan, Goodnight Punpun has been well received by young

58  José Andrés Santiago people. Punpun’s shy and introspective personality has allowed many young manga readers—who, in turn, are also timid and/or socially awkward—to see themselves reflected not in the character’s actions but in the precariousness and emotional conflict that affect the protagonist. As such, comics’ liquid nature allows for an empathetic connection that would otherwise have been very difficult to achieve.

Notes

1. The romanization of Japanese words in this chapter follows the modified Hepburn system. However, personal names are indicated in the Western order, given name preceding the surname. 2. Lit. “dramatic pictures.” The Japanese term for manga aimed at adult audiences, characterized by the extensively use of cinematic techniques (Holmberg 2011) and mature themes, and often seen as a response to the early work of Tezuka. It was first coined in 1957 by Yoshihiro Tatsumi and later adopted by other like-minded Japanese artists. 3. Manga oriented to young adult men. 4. Conventionalized pictorial elements, often conveying a metaphorical—non-literal— meaning. 5. Goodnight Punpun has been also published in several countries, including the United States (2016), France (2012), Germany (2013), Italy (2011), Spain (2015) and Poland (2020), among others. 6. Although Berndt’s quote refers to Suehiro Maruo’s manga, I am using it with regard to Asano’s [denoted in square brackets] Goodnight Punpun. 7. Asano explains that Satchan would, in turn, represent the star Deneb, therefore becoming a love triangle.

References Allison, Anne. 2015. “Precarity and Hope: Social Connectedness in Postcapitalist Japan.” In Japan: The Precarious Future, edited by Frank Baldwin and Anne Allison, 36–57. New York: Social Science Research Council and New York University Press. ———. 2013. Precarious Japan. London: Duke University Press. Alverson, Brigid. 2018. “The Strange Everyday Worlds of Manga Creator Inio Asano.” B&N Sci-Fi Fantasy Blog (blog), June 14, 2018. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/ blog/sci-fi-fantasy/the-strange-everyday-worlds-of-manga-creator-inio-asano/. Asano, Inio. 2020. Diario de un Mangaka [Mangaka nyumon]. Ribadedeva: Milky Way Ediciones. Berndt, Jaqueline. 2014. “‘Real’ Manga: Diversity, Hybridity, Relationalities.” In Manga Realities: Exploring the Art of Japanese Comics Today (exh.cat.), edited by Yasuko Furuichi, 213–219. Manila: The Japan Foundation. ———. 2012. “Facing the Nuclear Issue in a ‘Mangaesque’ Way: The Barefoot Gen Anime.” Cinergie, no. 2 (2012): 148–162. ———. 2007. “Manga and ‘Manga’: Contemporary Japanese Comics and Their Dis/ Similarities with Hokusai Manga.” In Civilization of Evolution, Civilization of Revolution, Metamorphoses in Japan 1900–2000, edited by Arkadiusz Jablonski, et al., 210–222. Krakow: Museum of Japanese Art and Technology.

Visual Representation of a Morphing Identity in Goodnight Punpun  59 ———. 2006. “Adult Manga: Maruo Suehiro’s Historically Ambiguous Comics.” In Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Steffi Richter, 107–125. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. Berndt, Jaqueline, and Enno Berndt. 2015. “Magazines and books. Changes in the Manga Market.” In Manga: Medium, Art and Material, edited by Jaqueline Berndt, 227–239. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH. Butler, Judith. 2012. “Precarious Life, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Cohabitation.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 26, no. 2 (2012): 134–151. muse.jhu.edu/ article/486301. ———. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? New York: Verso. ———. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso. Cakes. 2013. 浅野いにお・前編「ツイッターで『浅野いにお』と検索できるようにな った」. Cakes (blog), June 18, 2013. https://cakes.mu/posts/2240. Cohn, Neil. 2013. The Visual Language of Comics. Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images. London: Bloomsbury. Cuba, Miguel. 2015. “Caminar, dibujar. El cómic como cuaderno de viaje: interacciones, estrategias y posibilidades” [Walking, drawing. Comics as travelogues: interactions, strategies and possibilities]. PhD thesis, Universidade de Vigo. Forceville, Charles, ed. 2009. Multi-Modal Metaphor: Applications of Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: de Gruyter. Gagné, Nana Okura. 2020. “From Employment Security to Managerial Precarity: Japan’s Changing Welfare-Work Nexus and Its Impacts on Mid-career Workers.” Pacific Affairs 93, no. 2 (June): 379–400. 10.5509/2020933379. Holmberg, Ryan. 2011. “An Introduction to Gekiga, 6970 A.D.”. The Cómics Journal, April 24, 2011. https://www.tcj.com/an-introduction-to-gekiga-6970-a-d/3/ Kano, Ayako. 2015. “The Future of Gender in Japan: Work/Life Balance and Relations between the Sexes.” In Japan: The Precarious Future, edited by Frank Baldwin and Anne Allison, 87–109. New York: Social Science Research Council and New York University Press. Kelts, Roland. 2007. Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mangabrog. 2014. “Inio Asano Interview—‘Reality Is Tough, so Read This Manga about Cute Girls and Feel Better’.” Mangabrog (blog), July 6, 2014. https://mangabrog. wordpress.com/2014/07/06/inio-asano-interview-reality-is-tough-so-read-this-manga-about-cute-girls-and-feel-better/. Mangabrog. 2015. “A Tour through Inio Asano’s Workspace.” Mangabrog (blog), August 17, 2015. https://mangabrog.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/a-tour-through-inio-asanosworkspace/. McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial. Ozaki, Mio. 2010. “The Disaffected World of Inio Asano.” The Daily Yomiuri, April 16, 2010. https://archive.is/20100424192155/http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/ arts/20100416TDY11T02.htm#selection-691.1-691.14. Walker, Mort. 1980. The Lexicon of Comicana. New York: Comicana Books. Wilde, Lukas R.A. 2020. “Material Conditions and Semiotic Affordances: Natsume Fusanosuke’s Many Fascinations with the Lines of Manga.” Mechademia 12, no. 2 (2020): 62–82. muse.jhu.edu/article/761076.

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“A Malaise That We Don’t Know What to Name” Cruel Optimism and Residual Disenchantment in Nadar’s El mundo a tus pies (2015) Katie Salmon

The graphic novel El mundo a tus pies by Nadar (Pep Domingo, Castellón, 1985), provides an intimate “emotional view” of the abiding precarity and vulnerability afflicting his so-called “lost generation” in the aftermath of the 2008 Spanish financial crisis (Nadar cited in Monje 2015. All translations mine). This perspective affords qualitative, experiential insight that counterpoises mainstream media and clinical accounts, which focus predominantly on the crisis’s quantifiable, macroeconomic and macro-political consequences (GDP, unemployment, healthcare cost) (see Gili, Campayo et al. 2014). The graphic novel is divided into three, nonintersecting stories, which provide a fly-on-the-wall documentation of the everyday struggles of its three 30-year-old protagonists: Carlos, David and Sara. Although they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, Nadar’s characters belong to “the precariat”—a new “mass class defined by unstable labor arrangements, lack of identity, and erosion of rights” (Standing 2018). The initiation of their generation (the most formally educated in Spain’s history) into the workforce coincided with the deep recession triggered by the implosion of an over-extended property market and the collapse of multinationals (Lehman Brothers, Goldman-Sachs) in 2008. The crisis saw restrictions to welfare programs, education and healthcare cuts, mass unemployment, and the expansion of the precarious “gig economy,” causing an exponential rise in inequality. The effects of the crisis were prolonged by severe neoliberal austerity measures, which were implemented during the second tenure of socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2008–2011) and continued by Mariano Rajoy’s right-wing Partido Popular (2011–2018). These circumstances rendered crisis “perpetual:” “no longer a turning point in history but rather an immanent condition of history, part of its “normal” working, indistinguishable from its own aftermath” (Williams 2012, 30). As Nadar (cited in farodevigo 2015) remarks: “for my generation no other reality exists except the crisis.” His close attention to the mundane rather than the symbolic, evokes this sense of “crisis ordinariness” (Berlant 2011, 59). Commonplace onomatopoeia (food crunching, phones ringing) and close-ups of banal objects (coffee cups, kettles) anchor crisis in the ordinary. The inclusion of “real” iconography (the Facebook homepage, WhatsApp messages) and popular DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-6

Cruel Optimism and Residual Disenchantment 61 culture references (TV shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad) function to the same end. The panels are also firmly rooted in the everyday Spanish context, as reflected in the comic’s colloquialisms, the neighbourhood bars, the red and white Renfe trains or David’s mother’s “croquettes.” El mundo a tus pies illustrates how the “perpetual” crisis stripped Nadar’s cohort of the personally, professionally and financially secure futures anticipated in their formative years within the buoyant economic climate of the mid-1990s–early 2000s. At this time, Spain had “comfortably inhabited its newly acquired image as a model member of the European Union that had managed to shed its undemocratic past to achieve explosive economic growth” (Bezhanova 2017, xvii–xix). As Sara’s sister remarks in the graphic novel, “We grew up enveloped by ideas of success and prosperity.” The comic’s acerbic title—“The world at your feet”—captures the dissolution of such ideas and the characters’ sense of betrayal towards their parents’ generation who promised them a future “good life” (involving homeownership, further education and long-term employment). The protagonists are obliged to reconcile themselves to an adulthood that has not materialized as they had expected. They must learn to accept that, in the words of Spanish novelist, Isaac Rosa (cited in Nadar 2015) in the comic’s prologue: “The future (wasn’t) was this.” Nadar plays on the comic’s capacity to “make visible an invisible wound” (Gross 2018). He uses diverse comic affordances—visual metaphor, emanata, temporally split frames—to illuminate the symptoms of “a malaise that we don’t know what to name” (Rosa in Nadar 2015) which binds the three stories. Nadar’s graphic articulation of this verbally ineffable state testifies to the comic’s “immediacy and diagrammatic ability to display otherwise hard-to-express realities and sensations” (Chute 2017, 241). This chapter first examines how the protagonists’ precarious employment contributes to the overriding malaise. It pinpoints the parallels with Nadar’s own life that create a type of meta-narrative. Indeed, Nadar (cited in Jiménez 2015) calls the graphic novel “semi-biographical” because it incorporates his own experiences and those of friends and family members. The chapter then situates the malaise as part of a broader psychological and ideological loss of the futures that this generation had envisaged. It explores such loss through Lauren Berlant’s (2011) concept of “cruel optimism” and what I term “residual disenchantment.” To begin, then, with Nadar’s “semi-biographical” engagement with precarious employment, it is apparent that his own career trajectory most closely resembles that of Carlos. Carlos is a trained industrial engineer. He is disillusioned after spending the last six years working in a clothing store, having been unable to find work in his field in Spain. A job offer in Tallinn, Estonia, finally presents the opportunity to use his professional skills, but potentially means leaving behind his partner, Diego. It also entails parting with his close childhood friend Miriam, who is the only remaining member of their friendship group not to emigrate, despite juggling two tutoring jobs with shifts in a café to stay financially afloat (approximately 1,600,000 Spaniards under 34 emigrated between 2012 and 2016) (Selva and Recordà 2018). The emotional sacrifices of emigration are stressed from the story’s introductory splash page: a dismal image of luggage being loaded onto an aeroplane as

62  Katie Salmon rain falls from an overcast sky, accompanied by the quotation “Nothing is left behind” (from Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, whose work recurrently explores exodus). Nadar was similarly frustrated by a lack of professional opportunities in his home country. After completing his Fine Arts degree at Barcelona University, where he adopted his pseudonym from the French photographer, Nadar worked as a bookseller while trying to forge a career out of his comics vocation (Abella 2015). This ambition was only realized by migrating to the French comics market. In 2012, he was awarded a residency at the Maison des auteurs in Angoulême, as part of the Bilbao AlhóndigaKomic scholarship. The grant enabled him to publish his first graphic novel Papel estrujado (2013), which won the public prize for best work at the 2014 Barcelona International Comic Festival. His subsequent works—¡Salud! (2018), El cineasta (2020) and Justin (2021)—have all been published in France and he has collaborated with notable French scriptwriters, Philippe Thirault and Julien Frey. Despite the critical acclaim that Nadar received for Papel estrujado in Spain, he was unemployed for over a year when he returned from France and was obliged to live with his in-laws. In David’s story, Nadar tackles unemployment and the obstacles it presents to emancipation. David lacks formal qualifications and has been unemployed for four years. He lives in his childhood home and spends his days scouring job advertisements and caring for his frail, wheelchair-bound grandfather while his mother works as a cleaner to support the whole family. His evenings are spent browsing photographs of his ex-girlfriend on Facebook, who left him because of his financial inability to start a family. David’s and Nadar’s cases reflect reality for many young Spaniards. In 2015, it was reported that 80% could not afford to move out of home (Sánchez 2015). Irene Sabaté (2016) confirms that the implosion of life projects following the crisis has left young people to contend with renegotiated presents by living in their pasts (often with parents or grandparents). This social and material regression is suggested by the conspicuously teenage appearance of David’s bedroom (with its single bed and motorbike posters). Moreover, jobs that would have been accessible to David before the crisis (in retail or hospitality) are now occupied by those with degrees like Carlos and Sara. The central positioning of David’s story in the graphic novel is paramount. It serves to expose disparities within the young precariat and invites the reader to consider the knock-on effect that middle-class precarity has had on the working class, especially in terms of access to employment. Nadar never discredits Carlos’s and Sara’s emotions, but the juxtaposition with David’s story puts their struggles into a wider perspective—when Carlos does not consider his shop work, “a real job”; or when Sara mocks her boss’s comment that if she does not want her call-centre job, there are millions of others who do. Nadar highlights the many others who would be grateful for Carlos’s and Sara’s roles when David attends a job interview at a gas company. An overhead shot captures the sizeable crowd of people queuing at the doorway. A subsequent “momentto-moment” (McCloud 1993) transition simulates David pushing his grandfather in his wheelchair—whom he must take to the interview because his mother

Cruel Optimism and Residual Disenchantment 63 is working, and they cannot afford care—down the length of the queue. The reader is obliged to “move” with David and register how many others he must compete with for the job. A frame dedicated to the number 39 reinforces how far down the street David has come from the interview that is taking place at number 27. Years of such experiences make David abandon hope of finding conventional employment. He answers a personal ad for a male escort placed by an obnoxious upper-class divorcée named Claudia, whose lack of self-awareness and condescending attitude highlight the polarization between Spain’s top 1% and the precariat. Claudia informs David that she is “pre-retired.” When he questions what this means, she elaborates that she retired early from her real estate business. She may therefore have profited from the property bubble at the expense of thousands like David. Nadar deploys large establishing shots to delineate the opulence of Claudia’s living conditions compared with David’s. Her neighbourhood, with its wide, tree-lined streets and the exterior of her gated mansion contrast sharply with previous establishing shots showing the view from David’s bedroom, which overlooks a sea of apartment blocks. Nadar’s is not the only Spanish post-crisis cultural narrative to feature a young unemployed protagonist who seeks work in the sex industry. The protagonists of Jaime Rosales’s similarly ironically titled film, Beautiful Youth (2014) participate in a porn film after constant rejections from standard jobs. Though this solution to long-term unemployment is not representative of most young people’s post-crisis reality, in both Nadar’s and Rosales’s works, it functions as a potent narrative device to emphasize the feelings of desperation and loss of dignity that accompany being out of work in neoliberal productivity-driven societies where employment grants a sense of identity and self-worth. Nadar stresses David’s degradation by giving the sequences portraying his sexual encounters with Claudia a seamy feel through their crimson-red backgrounds and figure-shading. He also deploys elements of the grotesque—giving Claudia a monstrous toothy smile and a bulbous tongue. Dramatic splash panels and bleeds depicting explicit sexual acts are utilized to incite discomfort in the reader, underscoring the debasing lengths to which David is pushed by his socioeconomic circumstances. During David’s interactions with Claudia, Nadar invariably reduces the size of his figure to emphasize the belittling nature of her requests—for example, when she asks him to measure his penis. He also stresses David’s anonymity to Claudia by making him faceless in some sequences. Sara’s story captures a comparable sense of identity loss. Sara hoped to pursue a Ph.D. after gaining work experience and financial security. Her university tutor pronounced her undergraduate thesis one of the best he had ever seen. He envisaged a promising future ahead of her. All she needed to do was work hard and believe in herself. Six years on, Sara is stuck in a precarious call-centre job. She is a “nimileurista,” earning 600 euros a month, selling life insurance for a ruthless boss named Rottenmeier—after Fräulein Rottenmeier in Heidi. The role makes Sara feel dehumanized and resentful, as encapsulated by the provocative quote from André Gide’s The Immoralist (1902) that introduces her story:

64  Katie Salmon “They’re alive, they seem to be alive and do not know it.” The quote is accompanied by a splash page depicting an overhead view of Sara’s office. The employees are hunched over their computers. The vertical lines of their cubicles give the impression of being caged in, inviting the reader to consider whether this is what human life has been reduced to by capitalism. Visual metaphor evokes Michel Foucault’s (1979) “biopolitics”—the fashioning of the human body into the machinery of production—when Nadar replaces Sara’s head with that of a robot, as she repeats the same scripted dialogue in a series of unsuccessful sales attempts. The script is repeated over three pages, obliging the reader to experience Sara’s sense of monotony. The “robot” eventually burns out. Curly smoke lines emanate from its head. Sara’s script, which plugs a “trustworthy life insurance,” questions the ethics of multinationals that continue to push life insurance during crises when people are losing their assets. Nadar (cited in Abella 2015) explains that, like Sara, he has “only known precarious jobs with poor working conditions, but you accept them because there is nothing else.” Unlike David, Sara’s work allows her to rent a flat with her graphic designer partner Nico, but they struggle to pay the bills each month. Sara relies on diazepam to quell the anxiety induced by the discrepancy between her current professional and financial conditions and those she had imagined in her childhood. As with the rest of the characters, it is this discrepancy that produces Berlant’s “cruel optimism.” Berlant (2011, 1) defines cruel optimism as the anxious and conflicted sensorial expression of the current historical present or impasse. It is a state that “exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing.” Nadar’s protagonists are “living halfway between two systems, two ways of thinking” (Nadar cited in Jiménez 2015). They remain “cruelly” attached to the now untenable “good life fantasies” of their childhoods, despite knowing that “liberalist-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives add up to something” (Berlant 2011, 2). Such attachment is underscored through flashbacks and temporally split panels, which are distinguished from the main narrative, and demarcated as memory through their pink or blue hue and wavy, borderless panels—identified by Will Eisner [1985] as the most common past time indicator in comics. In one frame, Nadar delineates the present with yellow shading and the past with blue. On the present side, Sara is at the call centre being berated by Rottenmeier for her poor telephone manner and lack of sales. On the past side, a young, optimistic Sara sits in her university lecturer’s office. He recommends that she develop her exceptional undergraduate thesis into a Ph.D. The void between her former expectations and current precarious existence is brought into stark focus. The image arouses a sense of displacement and disembodiment that Sara later expresses: “I have the feeling that I’m living a life that doesn’t belong to me… it’s as if I were someone else … Nothing fits with who I am.” This speaks to Habermas’ (1973 [1988]) “legitimation crisis”—when a system’s crisis within modern capitalism shifts or unsettles societal values and beliefs, triggering an identity crisis in the individual who no longer identifies with the system that retains legal authority. It also captures the “betwixt and between”

Cruel Optimism and Residual Disenchantment 65 central to Victor Turner’s (1967) “liminality,” signalling the individual’s severance from their former status. Berlant elaborates that individuals cling to fantasy because it imbues their lives with identity and purpose: “Fantasy is the means by which people hoard idealizing theories and tableaux about how they and the world ‘add up to something’” (2011, 2). In a precarious present, fantasy helps people feel grounded. It preserves their sense of self in a day-to-day that might otherwise feel meaningless and chaotic. Such “optimism” explains why people accept “compromised conditions of possibility” and “ride the wave of the system of attachment they are used to” even when that system fails them (Berlant 2011, 28). However, past attachments also provide solace. Nadar’s characters sometimes turn to the past to escape the uncertainty of the present, looking back nostalgically to simpler, more comforting times when the future was brighter. At times of crisis, childhood recollections constitute “a form of time travel away from the foreignness of the present as an uneasy, inhospitable time to be living in” (Snyder 2014, 224). Snyder’s observation evokes Zygmunt Bauman’s (2017) “retrotopia,” when the anxiety, insecurity or violence of the present makes people turn to the past as the place on to which utopia is projected. A poignant example of the past affording solace is when Miriam accompanies Carlos to the airport when he leaves for Estonia. A pink cloud occupying the centre of a page is filled with sketches chronicling their shared memories—playing computer games as children, doing karaoke. Unrestrained by borders, these non-sequential sketches mimic the patchy nature of memory. On either side of the memory cloud, mirror images show Carlos and Miriam hugging each other tightly in the present. This draws attention to their mutual pain. The shot breaks the 180-degree rule (applicable to both comics and films), adding an imaginary panel that sutures the reader into the narrative. The overall image conveys a deep loss that is reinforced by the subsequent point of view panel of Miriam watching Carlos walk away through the glass of the terminal building. This marks out the new distance between them. The state of cruel optimism is enhanced by the protagonists’ intergenerational resentment towards their parents’ generation, whom they see as having achieved the good life fantasies that they desire, and as benefitting from Spain’s “neoliberal turn” during the transition to democracy (1975–1982) at their expense. Such tension is most palpable in an eight-page sequence depicting a heated argument between Sara and her parents, after they suggest that she is moaning unnecessarily about her precarious circumstances. Sara perceives her father as unsympathetic to her socioeconomic situation when, attempting to reassure her, he tells her that starting out has always been difficult and that this is a mere “bump in the road” (the title of Sara’s story). Sara reads his subsequent comment—“your mother and I lived on next to nothing. We never went out to eat or treated ourselves to anything”—as criticism that she and Nico are frivolous and should economize to progress. Her father reminds her of the privileges they have as part of Western society—clean drinking water, a varied year-round food supply—and to think of all those who risk their lives crossing the Gibraltar Strait to come to Spain. He talks of the sacrifices made by his generation during the

66  Katie Salmon dictatorship to give their children a better life: “you didn’t have to live through a dictatorship or run up against fascists.” David’s mother alludes to similar sacrifices: “You don’t know what your father and I went through …” This establishes a disparity between the older generation’s past struggles when there was a tangible, visible enemy on either the left or the right, and Generation Y’s present fight against the “invisible hand” of the neoliberal state. It is the intangibility of Generation Y’s “enemy” that makes the parents misunderstand or underestimate their children’s professional and financial obstacles, and to instead perceive them as spoilt or workshy. “That’s the problem with all of you!” Sara’s father unfairly generalizes, “You haven’t fought for anything in your lives and now you don’t do anything except complain.” This demonstrates how the system’s inscrutability allows anger fuelled by socioeconomic inequalities to be misassigned between generations at micro-level, rather than targeting those responsible at macro-level. Nadar formally evokes such anger through the panel backgrounds, which switch from a neutral beige to a deep red. Sara’s figure is highlighted in yellow as if electrically charged. Testifying to Eisner’s (2008, 169) point that “to preserve the emotion it is advisable to anchor the composition of the page around the gesture or posture of the main characters,” Nadar keeps the backgrounds uncluttered to privilege the facial and corporeal expression of rage. The intergenerational conflict is rooted in historical tensions dating back to the “post-political” (Mouffe 2018) nature of the neoliberal consensus consolidated in the 1977 Moncloa Pacts, which saw politics consigned to elite forums. Wider democratic proposals and social movements were dismantled through the criminalization of those who retained a radical and autonomous stance (Tudela and Cattaneo 2016). The Communist Party attained legalization by renouncing Leninism and accepting the monarchy, while the Socialist Party abandoned Marxism. A significant chunk of the population was therefore deprived of their political voice and denied the opportunity for a truly open democratic process that would bring radical change as opposed to continued Francoist policies. This manifested itself in sensations of loss, alienation and betrayal that have been widely described as “desencanto” (“disenchantment”) (Vázquez-Montalbán 1995; Vilarós 1998). Pedro Pérez del Solar (2013, 16) claims that many former revolutionaries, “stopped considering themselves active subjects in social change.” Disengaging from politics, they turned to “more pleasurable occupations”: “to give life new meaning through consumption.” Sara sees her parents’ generation as “selling out” and renouncing their political integrity in favour of material gains. “Many of your old revolutionary friends are now the rich big fish who fill their pockets at young people’s expense,” she tells her father. “They are our bosses, those who asphyxiate us with rent and stop us from progressing.” The implication of intent here on the part of the transition generation is problematic since in their fight for democracy and freedom in the 1970s, they would have believed that they were securing a better future for their children. They could not have anticipated how the neoliberal nature of that democracy would later impede their progress. Sara fails to recognize that the transition generation’s uptake of consumerist pursuits was not necessarily an active choice, but rather systemically configured.

Cruel Optimism and Residual Disenchantment 67 She reminds her father of the disparity between their lives at the same age when he already had a lectureship and owned a house. Now he is a professor, owns three properties and has a healthy pension awaiting him. She criticizes her parents’ excessive spending, reminding them of their compulsive weekend shopping trips and the boat they bought on a whim. As Sara speaks, she is depicted floating off her chair surrounded by these goods with a serene expression on her face. The large, vertical borderless panel and the green vortex-like background suggest liberation and hope, as if she is exonerating herself from the burden of these consumerist mores and moving towards something new. Nevertheless, Sara’s self-construction as a victim of her parents’ materialism raises questions of privilege since she is likely to inherit their wealth. The suggestion of transcendence is also debatable, since in demarcating the difference between their young adulthoods, she evidently aspires to the same lifestyle. This reiterates the paradoxical state of cruel optimism. For Sara Ahmed (2014), anger is endowed with a physical, energizing force, as reflected in the corporeal responses illustrated by Nadar. This force is potentially transformative if channelled constructively and collectively to challenge societal injustices. “If anger pricks our skin, if it makes us shudder, sweat and tremble” then “it might just shudder us into new ways of being; it might just enable us to inhabit a different kind of skin” (Ahmed 2014, 175). The Spanish 15-M “indignados” demonstrations of 2011 proved anger’s affective energy. They were “galvanized by a politics of indignation” against “government leaders and plutocrats (the so-called 1%) while advancing counter-hegemonic strategies within the framework of primarily nonviolent mobilizations” (Cameron 2014, 1). Through the broad circulation of “subprime life stories” (Labrador Méndez 2012) of precarity, like Nadar’s, the 15-M expressed “widespread resentment for the neoliberal practices that have intensified income inequality and expanded the precariat,” demanding “political reforms in an effort to (re)construct democratic processes” under the slogan “Real Democracy NOW” (Cameron 2014, 1). The 15-M fleetingly encapsulated a more “sustainable imagination,” calling for “the reproduction of collective life as opposed to the individualist and productivist bubble” (MorenoCaballud 2012, 535). Nadar arouses memories of the 15-M through the mobilizing lyrics of The White Stripes’ song Seven Nation Army (2003), which was appropriated by the movement after becoming an anthem of defiance in the Arab Spring: “I’m gonna fight ‘em off a seven-nation army couldn’t hold me back… They’re gonna rip it off … Taking their time right behind my back …” The lyrics are superimposed over another temporally divided panel of an adult Sara lying awake anxiously at night and a hopeful teenage Sara. This stresses the need to reignite the indignation behind the movement to recover its momentum. The comic registers the waning of the 15-M four years on. By 2015, grassroots movements had been curtailed through the implementation of the repressive “Organic Law for Citizen’s Security” commonly known as the “gagging law” because of its criminalization of public protests. A friend of David’s alludes to the law: “we didn’t achieve shit. They treated us as if we were nothing, as if we were criminals.” Moreover, austerity measures prioritizing the corrupted

68  Katie Salmon banking sector (the “shitty bankers” in David’s words) over citizens’ wellbeing, made neoliberalism appear unsurmountable and resistance seem futile. The “strange non-death of neoliberalism” (Crouch 2011) is reflected in the quotation from Paul Auster’s dystopian novel In the Country of Last Things (1987) that introduces David’s story: “What really astounds me is not that everything is collapsing, but rather the great number of things that remain standing.” Furthermore, from late 2014, the government advanced an unfounded narrative of recovery (based on a 1.4% rise in GDP), announcing that “the crisis is history” (Rajoy cited in El País 2014). This eclipsed the socioeconomic and psychological reverberations of the crisis still being felt by millions at micro-level. As Nadar (cited in Abella 2015) observes: “they say that the crisis is passing, that we are recovering but the land that it has left is barren and we are somewhat lost.” He subverts the recovery narrative by juxtaposing an image of a television reporter optimistically announcing that, “the end of the tunnel is in sight for the economic crisis in Spain,” with a long horizontal panel showing David and his mother frowning at the television in disbelief, while his grandfather sleeps in his wheelchair. This poignant image of three generations who live together on one meagre salary and for whom there is no end to the crisis in sight, highlights the disparity between the official narrative and actual lived experiences. That the family is afforded a larger panel than the reporter ensures that their narrative is prioritized over that of the media. Marina Garcés (2017) identifies a contemporary “posthumous condition” arising from the perceived loss of future. In place of the future imaginaries that guided our civilization, we have constructed a catastrophic dogma, making the apocalypse seem inevitable. There is an “enlightened illiteracy” behind this narrative. The knowledge of humanity teaches us that the neoliberal growth paradigm is socially and ecologically unsustainable, yet simultaneously makes us feel powerless to intercede: “we can only slow down or accelerate our fall into the abyss” (Garcés 2017, 9). Gone is modernity’s prosperous future and postmodernity’s dynamic present. The present is now arduous as if we are approaching death while we still have time ahead of us. Such paralysis signals “the defeat of the modern revolutionary cycle, with its drive to radically remake the world from political action” (Garcés 2017, 21). David expresses Garcés’ apocalyptic sentiment when his friend proposes remobilising. “Move? Where to? I don’t think that anything can be changed.” Like Berlant, Garcés (2017, 21) conceives of the contemporary moment as an impasse: “We are situated at a painfully contradictory junction: we are small and precarious, but we have an immeasurable power.” Nevertheless, channelling such power into political action is confounded by an inability to determine who or what to resist. As David vocalises: “To go to war, you must first know who the enemy is, right? And now nobody knows who the hell to attack. That’s why no one does anything.” His comments reflect Foucault’s observation on the elusiveness of neoliberal power: “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (1979, 93), including our very psyches. The state of cruel optimism attests that the battle to resist neoliberalism is as much internal as external.

Cruel Optimism and Residual Disenchantment 69 Nevertheless, Berlant (2011, 199) asserts that despite being an anxious space, the “unbound temporality” of the impasse marks a delay that compels activity. It may spark “rejection, refusal, detachment, psychosis, and all kinds of radical negation,” but equally, it may enable individuals to “develop gestures of composure, of mannerly transaction, of being-with in the world.” This connects to Amador Fernández-Savater’s (cited in Arjona 2013) idea that: “in every crisis there is enormous potential for the renewal of individual and collective life, it is not only something to get out of or a breakdown to repair.” Matt Davies correspondingly talks of such contingency amidst a Habermasian legitimation crisis whereby subjects can “only move forward by modifying their own subjective conditions—otherwise the subject either remains mired in their own contradictions or it ceases to be” (2012, 317). Nadar’s protagonists undergo modification processes in their stories’ denouements and epilogues. These processes can be related to Verónica Gago’s (2014) “calculus:” the material life-affirming strategies adopted by marginalized subjects to reorient neoliberal rationality towards more resourceful exchange and well-being practices from which potentialities for resistance emerge. Although Gago refers to concrete strategies, the comic shows that such tactics need not be solely material and often involve less perceptible affective processes of identity reassessment and a readjustment of expectations to the current historical present. In a “bildungsroman-esque” vein, Nadar’s protagonists must unlearn their imagined futures, which somewhat eases their mental strain and plants the seed for resistance in the reader. For Carlos, emigration brings renewed professional opportunities and affiliations, as it did for Nadar. This is conveyed in two frames in which his new colleagues gather supportively around his computer and show him plans for an engineering project. It is what Berlant identifies as a hopeful outcome of the impasse, when managing a problem that “dissolves the old sureties and forces improvisation” becomes “a pleasure and a plus, not a loss” (2011, 200). David’s and Sara’s denouements involve cathartic outpourings. David challenges Claudia’s indifference, calling her an “insupportable snob” and a “shitty classist.” He is finally afforded the visibility he deserves when his angry face replaces a portrait of Claudia’s architect son Leonardo, who has attained his professional standing through nepotism. David’s outburst is bolstered by pathetic fallacy. A stormy sky and pelting rain suggest liberation and purification as he marches away from Claudia’s neighbourhood. The concluding flashforward reveals that he returns to escort work. Although this time it is on his own terms, the accompanying monologue from David’s mother extolling his promising new job, reveals that it comes at the cost of living a secret life. Sara’s emotional detachment from the good life fantasies instilled by her parents’ generation is conveyed through a creative double-page spread and bleed with an apocalyptic red-orange backdrop. In the centre, Sara’s panic-stricken face is flanked by ghostly white sketches of her university lecturer, Rottenmeier’s angry face and her friend Núria, whose financial conditions oblige her to have an abortion. The umbilical cord extending from her stomach speaks to the familial ties that Sara must psychologically cut to come to terms with her own adulthood.

70  Katie Salmon The need to cast off outmoded future fantasies is later restated by her sister: “We must get rid of that burden […] learn to live in a new reality […] we need to live! Stop fantasising and live.” This statement has a biographical basis. Nadar (cited in Jiménez 2015) similarly has learnt “not to think about the future, I have realized that it is a mistake and burden from another age, where the future existed and was better than the present. We must have hope and fight for the present, let go of pipe dreams.” Nadar reiterates this message through “braiding”: a supplementary element or motif repeated (at least twice) which enriches the reading process (Groensteen 2009, 94). Braiding must “have a structuring effect and amount to a gain for the narrative, and for the work. The reader who has identified it must feel rewarded” (Groensteen 2009, 94). The reader may remain unaware of this element but still find the comic intelligible at a narrative level—as with intertextual references. Nadar’s braided messages to abandon future expectations are in English. The first appears on the T-shirt of an anonymous man in a flashback to a club where Carlos and Diego first meet, which bears the slogan: “Learn to forget.” Although Nadar refers to the need to forget unsustainable fantasies, his phrasing problematically echoes the motto of the pacted transition: “the pact of forgetting” the crimes of the dictatorship and civil war. The message is repeated through the lyrics of Florence and the Machine’s song Dog Days are Over (2009)—“leave all your love and your longing behind, you can’t carry it with you if you want to survive”—which float across two frames as a downcast Sara scrolls through Facebook, seemingly comparing her life to that of her peers. The end of Sara’s story, which concludes the graphic novel, is disconcerting. She recognizes that the “war” for her generation “is to learn to live in a world that doesn’t give a shit about us.” She jokes with her sister that if all else fails, they can always fall back on pills. Although this comment is light-hearted, it raises a serious question of medical ethical practice: the (self)medication of individuals for social problems—numerous quantitative studies cite an increase in psychotropic drugs consumption post-2008—(see Barceló et al. 2016). “Perhaps we are not as badly off as I thought,” Sara tells Nico on the train home from her parents’ house, acknowledging their relative privilege compared to peers like David. Nico, who has always been accepting of their lot, now looks doubtful. On the last page, another moment-to-moment transition captures him looking increasingly pensively out of the window. The final panel shows the train only. The lack of motion lines and red light indicate that it is at a standstill. The image conveys the unsettling message that the protagonists remain at the impasse “between crisis and transformation” (Fernández-Savater 2013). Concrete mobilization is required to move forward. While El mundo a tus pies does not offer precise exit routes out of the impasse, the protagonists’ unlearning processes gesture towards emancipation. They advocate “killing joy”: “to open a life, to make room for life, to make room for possibility, for chance, for alternative ways of living” (Ahmed 2010, 20). Nadar shows that “our liberation lies in rejecting the cruel optimism promoted by neoliberal fictions” (Prádanos 2018,18) by graphically illuminating the deep psychological and social cost of remaining affectively attached to untenable futures.

Cruel Optimism and Residual Disenchantment 71

References Abella, Anna. “El mundo no está a sus pies.” El Correo de Burgos, October 24, 2015. https://elcorreodeburgos.elmundo.es/articulo/gente/el-mundo-no-esta-a-sus-pies/ 20151024201206204843.html. Ahmed, Sara. 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke University Press. Barceló, María, Monserrat Coll-Negre, Gabriel Coll-de-Tuero and Marc Saez. 2016. “Effects of the Financial Crisis on Psychotropic Drug Consumption in a Cohort from a Semi-Urban Region in Catalonia, Spain.” PloS One 11: 2. https://doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148594. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2017. Retrotopia. Cambridge: Polity Press. Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press. Bezhanova, Olga. 2017. Literature of Crisis: Spain’s Engagement with Liquid Capital. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. Cameron, Bryan. 2014. “Spain in Crisis: 15-M and the Culture of Indignation.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 15: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/14636204.2014.100 2601. Chute, Hillary. 2017. Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere. New York: Harper Collins. Crouch, Colin. 2011. The Strange Non-death of Neoliberalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cué, Carlos. “Rajoy: ‘La crisis ya es historia.’” El Pais, December 11, 2014. https://elpais. com/politica/2014/12/11/actualidad/1418305803_331591.html. Davies, Matt. 2012. “The Aesthetics of the Financial Crisis: Work, Culture, and Politics.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 37, no. 4: 317–330. http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 23412527. Domingo, Pep. Nadar: “Para mi generación no existe otra realidad más que la crisis.” Faro de Vigo, October 3, 2015. https://www.farodevigo.es/pontevedra/2015/10/03/pepdomingo-nadar-generacion-existe-16804589.html. Eisner, Will. 2008. Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative. New York: Norton. Fernández-Savater, Amador. 2013. Fuera de lugar: conversaciones entre crisis y transformación. Madrid: Machado Grupo. Foucault, Michel. 1979. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. An Introduction. London: Allen Lane. Gago, Verónica. 2014. La razón neoliberal: economías barrocas y pragmática popular. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón Ediciones. Garcés, Marina. 2017. Nueva ilustración radical. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama. Gili, Margalida, Javier García Campayo and Miquel Roca. 2014. “Crisis económica y salud mental. Informe SESPAS 2014.” Gaceta Sanitaria 28: 104–108. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.gaceta.2014.02.005. Groensteen, Thierry. 2009. The System of Comics. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Gross, Jessica. 2018. “Invisible Made Visible: Landscape as Psychological Insight in Comics.” Paper presented at Madness, Mental Illness and Mind Doctors in 20th and 21st Century Popular Culture Conference, University of Edinburgh, May 2018. Habermas, Jürgen. [1973] 1988. Legitimation Crisis. Translated by Thomas. A. McCarthy. Oxford: Wiley. Jiménez, Jesús. “Nadar: “En ‘El mundo a tus pies’ intento dar salida a la frustración de mi generación.”” R, September 24, 2015. https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20150924/ nadar-mundo-tus-pies-intento-dar-salida-frustracion-generacion/1225001.shtml.

72  Katie Salmon Labrador Méndez, Germán. 2012. “Las Vidas ‘Subprime’: La Circulación De ‘Historias De Vida’ Como Tecnología De Imaginación Política En La Crisis Española (2007–2012).” Hispanic Review 80, no. 4: 557–581. www.jstor.org/stable/23275309. McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins & Kitchen Sink Press. Monje, Pedro. “Entrevista a Nadar sobre ‘El Mundo a Tus Pies.’” Zona Negativa, October 26, 2015. https://www.zonanegativa.com/entrevista-a-nadar-sobre-el-mundo-a-tus-pies/. Moreno-Caballud, Luis. 2012. “La imaginación sostenible: culturas y crisis económica en la España actual.” Hispanic Review 80, no. 4: 535–555. http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 23275308. Mouffe, Chantal. 2018. For a Left Populism. London: Verso. Nadar. 2015. El mundo a tus pies. Bilbao: Astiberri. Pérez del Solar, Pedro. 2013. Imágenes del desencanto: nueva historieta española 1980–1986. Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert. Prádanos, Luis. 2018. Postgrowth Imaginaries: New Ecologies and Counterhegemonic Culture in Post-2008 Spain. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Rosales, Jaime. dir. 2014. Hermosa Juventud. Wanda Visión, Bodega Films. Sabaté, Irene. 2016. “The Spanish Mortgage Crisis and the Re-emergence of Moral Economies in Uncertain Times.” History and Anthropology 27, no. 1: 107–120. https:// doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2015.1111882. Sánchez, Álvaro. “Why 80% of Spanish Youngsters Are Still Living with Their Parents.” El País, December 30, 2015. https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2015/12/30/inenglish/ 1451465661_430238.html. Selva, Clara and Aniol Recordà. 2018. “Spanish Youth Is Emigrating: A Bibliometric Approach to the Media Coverage,” PloS One 13, no. 6: e0198423. https://doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0198423. Snyder, Jonathan. 2014. “About Time: Sensing the Crisis in Nophoto’s El último verano.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 15: 221–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/14636204. 2014.931668. Standing, Guy. “The Precariat: Today’s Transformative Class?.” Great Transition Initiative, October 2018. https://greattransition.org/publication/precariat-transformative-class. Tudela, Enrique and Claudio Cattaneo. 2016. “Beyond Desencanto: The Slow Emergence of New Social Youth Movements in Spain During the Early 1980s.” In A European Youth Revolt. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, edited by Knud Andresen and Bart van der Steen. London: Palgrave Macmillan: pp. 127–141. Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel. 2015. Novelas del desencanto (1992–2003): Obra Narrativa III. Madrid: S.L.U. Espasa Libros. Vilarós, María. 1998. El mono del desencanto español. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Williams, Rosalind. 2012. “The Rolling Apocalypse of Contemporary History.” In Aftermath: The Cultures of the Economic Crisis, edited by Manuel Castells, Joao Caraça and Gustavo Cardoso. Oxford: Oxford University Press: p. 17–43.

5

What Is Love? Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves in the Works of Italian Women Graphic Novelists Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi

Introduction1 When, in 2008, the subprime mortgage crisis began developing into a global financial crisis that resulted in the promulgation of austerity measures and in significant waves of job losses, Italian younger generations had to abandon the guarantee of a wealthy and stable future inherited by their parents as a product of the “economic miracle” that transformed Italy in the 50s and 60s. Since then, Italians have familiarized themselves with the concept of precarity, getting used to increasingly insecure existences. This was especially true for Millennials and Generation Z, as shown by philosophers and sociologists’ effort to expand Pierre Bourdieu’s reflections on the génération precaire (1998) with research on the emergence of a precarious subjectivity (e.g., Morini 2010, 25–48; Fumagalli 2014, 52; Armano and Murgia 2014) and with a mapping of the proliferating social movements denouncing compulsory flexibility as a threat to people’s dignity (e.g., Bruni and Selmi 2010; Murgia and Selmi 2011). Although affecting primarily the area of work relationships and financial sustainability to which neoliberalism and the post-Fordist productive system are directly connected (Corbisiero, Scialdone and Tursilli 2009; Gallino 2014), precarity in Italy is now considered a pervasive issue that holistically permeates different spheres of people’s lives, thus resulting in a generalized “social precarity” (Murgia 2010). This is not surprising if we consider feminist theorizations that looked at reproduction, relationality, and emotionality as spheres that, despite being historically excluded from salaried work, are deeply connected to the maintenance of capitalist societies (Federici 2004). The link between precarious work and a more general social precarity, which comprises the sphere of relationality and emotions, is even less surprising if we consider that flexible work is shaped on the model of feminized labour, relying on the undoing of boundaries between private and working life, as well as on the absence of a stable set of working rights and remunerations that mirrors the lack of recognition historically assigned to women for their reproductive and care work (Standing 1989; Morini 2010). In this context, where precarity permeates all spheres of life, women are doubly discriminated. On the one hand, they are one of the categories more DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-7

74  Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi affected by the precarious condition, as confirmed by a recent survey published by the Italian National Statistics Institute, which observed a significant decrease in female occupation during the COVID-19-related pandemic (70% of total decrease), when mainly flexible and temporary jobs were lost (ISTAT 2021). On the other, Italian women have to face the challenges of being part of a society whose deep sexism still affects their right to equal opportunities, to a balanced division of care/domestic work, and even to their physical integrity and life. 2 In Italy, precarity has recently received substantial attention through artistic representations (Jansen 2012), becoming a crucial motif for young comic artists whose names are associated with the now mainstream graphic novel format.3 Among these, young women who work as graphic novelists offer a privileged perspective on the phenomenon and contribute to symbolizing the intersection of gender-based and precarity-based discriminations. This chapter aims to discuss the role played by Italian young women authors in portraying the gendered dimension of emotional precariousness (Butler 2009) in a historical period and a societal context in which pervasive financial, geographical and identity insecurities, coupled with a persistent sexist culture, push female subjectivities to deconstruct both the patriarchal grand narrative of romantic love and the radical feminist myth of sexual liberation. Focusing on the graphic novels La giusta mezura (“The right fit,” 2017) by Flavia Biondi, Non so chi sei (“I don’t know you,” 2017) by Cristina Portolano and Ti chiamo domani (“I’ll call you tomorrow,” 2019) by Rita Petruccioli, this chapter investigates the creative strategies adopted to represent the challenges and opportunities that emotional flexibility poses to female relationality and desire. After a brief introduction to the issue of precarious/liquid love and the theories that discuss it, the three graphic novels will be analyzed by looking at the themes and medium-specific techniques used to portray the aporia of emotional flexibility as both a possibility of liberation from traditional gender roles and a source of insecurity.

What is love? Feminism, choice, and precarious intimacies This section outlines the two main theoretical poles around which the discourse on sentimental relationships, young women’s condition and precarity in contemporary times revolve: on the one side, the tendency to look at the positive ethical and experiential value of fluidity and choice while scarcely problematizing it; on the other, the propensity to reject the liquid love paradigm, thus ending up feeding nostalgic feelings for stabler, linear relationships. The first of the two theoretical strands originates from the feminist reflections that produced a systematic critique of the patriarchal family institution during the 1970s. This stage of feminist activism, which is commonly known as the second wave—as opposed to the first wave of women’s suffragist struggles—directly followed the sexual liberation movements of the 1960s and relied on the notion of choice to challenge women’s subordination in the sphere of

Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves 75 relationships and sexuality. The emphasis on the rhetoric of women’s decision resulted in major historical changes in Italy, such as the promulgation of laws allowing divorce (1970) and abortion (1978). These examples suggest that the introduction of the political principle of women’s choice not only coincided with a defiance of the family-based patriarchal system; it was also connected to the disruption of the linearity of women’s (and men’s) relational and reproductive life. The promotion of people’s rights to operate free choices over their bodies, relationships, and gendered identities, later intensified and developed into a critique of the hetero-cis-normative societal order, to the point that some scholars refer to new waves of feminist and post-feminist activism as “choice feminism” (Hirshman 2006; Budgeon 2015). Not by coincidence, these trends emerged in a context of rising neoliberalism and precarity and were accompanied by an emphasis on the importance of autonomy and dynamism (Budgeon 2015, 304, 314). Many feminist philosophers and intellectuals adopting a vitalist view of relationality and sexuality optimistically conceptualize personal freedom and fluid desire as the main factors called to overcome the rigidity traditionally imposed by the patriarchal family structure. These include feminists who advocate for sexual looseness and polyamory (e.g., Vance 1984 [1992]; Ritchie and Barker 2007; Cardoso, Correia and Capella 2009), or alternative and non-nuclear kinship (e.g., Szachowicz-Sempruch 2016; Haraway 2016). In the Italian context, Angela Putino is among the thinkers who discuss the ethical value of fluidity regarding feminism and relationality. In her theorizations on the body and its possibilities in the era of the intensification of biopolitics, Putino insists on the irreducible singularity of the body, whose dynamism and ability to freely conglomerate with other bodies can circumvent the patriarchal and capitalist governmentality of life (2011, 65–80). In her view, a rejection of spatial and temporal linearity, coinciding with perpetual movement and with an earthly focus on the present, is the necessary premise for the repudiation of the concept of “senso” [telos], which is described as a “snare used to entrap the bodies […] to classify them, to distribute them, to find them a place in a sort of location that corresponds to discipline, measure, control” (69).4 The second theoretical strand, which fosters nostalgia for linear love, draws on Zygmunt Bauman’s notorious reflections on Liquid Love (2003) and his criticism of the accelerating process of “falling in and out of love” that characterizes contemporary relational practices (1). Bauman’s idea of a loss of stable emotional connections as source of sentimental frustration and exposition to the dynamics of neoliberal exploitation was furtherly developed by Eva Illouz, who introduced the notion of “cold intimacies” to describe the exponential spread of commodified hyper-connections that is nowadays facilitated by the internet. For Illouz, “the open-ended market regulated by the law of supply and demand” (2007, chapter 3) that defines the world of contemporary dating websites results from the rationalization and compulsory public exhibition of intimate relationships that, from the 1970s onwards, was implemented following the institutionalization of psychoanalytic and second-wave feminist discourses (chapter 1). In

76  Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi this context, the critique of the patriarchal family as a detrimental structure for people’s—women in particular—emotional health and the predominance of a rhetoric that insists on “authenticity, autonomy, equality, freedom” (Illouz 2012, 9) produced a destabilizing hyper-modern scenario in which “the search for love is an agonisingly difficult experience” (3). The “abundance of choice” and the “permanent sense of possibility” prevent the formation of durable commitments, which in turn determines “the difficulty of projecting the self into the future” (79, 89). One should notice that the theoretical positions of those who root for the ethical value of rhizomatic love and those who acknowledge its troubles are not polar opposites. In fact, despite showcasing antithetical views on the role love plays in society, both move from a harsh critique of neoliberalism, and both recognize the risks of disembodied relations. However, the two strands sum up two different conceptualizations that, as Emily Witt pointed out, not only polarized discussions on the topic of love and precariousness at a social level, but also created an intimate and apparently irresolvable partition between the coexisting desires for present fluidity and future stability among individuals belonging to the youngest generations (2016, chapter 1). This existential paradox will be the focus of the analysis proposed in the following pages, where we aim at demonstrating that both models are considered and ultimately contested in Italian graphic novels by women artists. In the texts, the divide is not resolved; instead, it is successfully evaded through the representation of sentimental and sexual desire as a flowing yet strong driving force that allows to conceptualize the dynamic present as a space where to cultivate a renewed idea of mutual support and constructible future. Given the aforementioned pervasive dimension of precarity, sentimental precariousness is a common thread in the graphic novels produced on the Italian peninsula since the early 2010s. We chose to focus on graphic novels authored by cis-gender women comics artists who decided to centre their stories on the sentimental adventures of (equally cis-gender) young women.5 On the one hand, our limited corpus should serve as an encouragement to continue investigating the theme of sentimental precariousness in Italian graphic novels, a field of representation where the gender dimension of fluid relationality deserves further attention. On the other, we believe it provides us with three case studies that explore different aspects of sentimental precariousness: from the attempt to make the model of the monogamous couple work, despite its crisis due to various types of precarity experienced by the partners (La giusta mezura), to the search for a new and different emotional and sexual balance following a break-up (Non so chi sei), to the end of a conflictual love affair born during an experience abroad (Ti chiamo domani).

Just (can’t get) enough: Flavia Biondi’s La giusta mezura La giusta mezura is Flavia Biondi’s second graphic novel, after La generazione (2015) and several shorter stories (two of which later collected in Le maldicenze, 2021) and before her collaboration with Ann Nocenti and Lee Loughridge (Ruby Falls, 2020).

Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves 77 In the book, Mia and Manuel are 29 and have been together for eight years. They are stuck between youth and adulthood, an in-betweenness reflected by their physical dislocation: they live with other housemates in Bologna—where they moved to study—paying rent under the table and having unsatisfactory little jobs. Mia studied sculpture and has just quit her job as a saleswoman; Manuel works in a pizzeria and writes a chivalric romance on the internet. Most of the conversations between them take place in their loft bed—beds feature frequently in the stories discussed here, for they are spaces of deep intimacy whose sharing is intrinsically meaningful, as sleeping with a person can be more challenging than having sex with them, and the resulting closeness be confrontational rather than pleasurable (see Figure 5.1). In fact, we quickly learn that the couple is in crisis. Steeped in ideas about the supposed value of romantic love, Manuel wants a house for the two of them only and proposes to Mia (Biondi 2017, 39); but her restless nature is not at ease with his rigidity, and, feeling somewhat trapped, she answers that she is not ready yet. Her feelings only partly derive from the isolate dynamic of their couple; rather, they stem from the inability, common to an entire generation of Italians (Magaraggia and Benasso 2019), to free oneself from the long tail of adolescence. Furthermore, as Raffaele Alberto Ventura (2017) affirms, the consequence of the aforementioned financial crisis most evidently affected those trained for jobs in the cultural sector. Rich in a cultural capital they could no longer convert into economic and social counterparts, they found themselves facing an identity crisis in which both ways out are losing: accepting underpaid (or unpaid) creative jobs, or resigning themselves to a series of small jobs—“I have been a call-centre operator, waitress, dialoguer, usher, saleswoman, entertainer” (Biondi 2017, 42)—that in turn left them increasingly precarious, less paid, less unionized and more vulnerable (Fana 2017; Staglianò 2018). This inevitably reverberates on one’s sentimental life. Mia and Manuel—as millennials, a hinge generation between two profoundly different sociohistorical paradigms—are in this sense archetypes not only of two different postures or reactions but also of two different historical moments, respectively preceding and following the post-modern caesura: Manuel, who quotes Andreas Capellanus’s 12th-century De amore [“about love”], embodies one of the most resilient grand narratives of modernity—namely, monogamous love; Mia champions a hypermodern version of it, in which the lack of points of reference (Biondi 2017, 70) is neither celebrated nor rejected, but continually problematized and renegotiated. Pressed by Manuel’s life plans and dissatisfied with their relationship, Mia almost cheats on him and decides not to tell. For a while the couple lives in a state of paradoxical euphoria, until one day he discovers the betrayal and they quarrel (91–101) and share each other’s unhappiness (108), facing the crisis they had both stubbornly tried to avert. The story ends with Mia and Manuel reconciling, his book about to be published, while she has just decided to enrol in a goldsmithing course. Mia asks him to move in together, the impasse seems fortunately solved, and the captions acting as a voice-over close the circle with her previous inability to use words,

78  Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi

Figure. 5.1  La giusta mezura. Copyright: Flavia Biondi, Bao Publishing (2017, 41).

finally encouraging to “sense the intimacy of what lies in the middle, where words fail” (158). Yet one cannot help noticing the persisting financial instability of both subjects, which makes them still undone moving together will most likely still mean living in a cheap apartment, and the idea of marrying will have to be at least postponed.

Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves 79 Despite being an optimistic ending, then, it is not an uncritical acceptance of the classic paradigm of the monogamous couple. On the contrary, it suggests a compromise—“la giusta mezura,” “the right fit,” or, to quote one English translation, “just enough”—between his and her desire, a shared and conflicting process of growth as the only possible path to make an idea of future imaginable. Indeed, at a visual and narratological level, this is the volume, among the ones discussed here, with the most linear structure. It is also the one with the highest level of stability in terms of colours—a constant three-colour palette: white/light blue/dark blue—layout—the pages feature a variable number of panels with different dimensions (hence some rhythm variations), but they are always delimited, rectangular, ordered, not fading, and not overflowing—and trait—maximum quantity of details, a high level of iconicity. This stability corresponds to the maximum stability of the narrated relationship, which, despite cracking, holds to the events. The only occurrences where the layout explodes and this regularity breaks are the inserts of Manuel’s book—the mirror of the old and rigid value system he believes in that threatens to break up the couple— and, less evidently, the very last pages, where the “giusta mezura” is apparently found, highlighting how their deal is way more fluid—and less stable, for better or worse—than it looked. The closing splash page showing an aerial view of Bologna—one of the Italian university towns par excellence—seen through the trees seems to signal and reaffirm, then, the strict connection between temporal and spatial in-betweenness in this search for one’s right fit.

Love in the time of Tinder: Cristina Portolano’s Non so chi sei Bologna is also the stage of another graphic novel, Portolano’s second work after the autobiographical bildungsroman Quasi signorina (2016) and before the short book Io sono mare (2018) and her biography of Francis Bacon (Francis Bacon. La violenza di una rosa, 2019). The story begins with the protagonist—an alter ego of the author, unnamed as every other character—sexting with someone. They discuss trying BDSM together before eventually meeting. Their first conversation at a bar table acts as a frame for the story she tells, when, after the infamous ice-breaking question—“so, how long have you been using Tinder?”—she recounts her encounters and intercourses with different men and reflects on those experiences. The story spans four chapters and details her sexual experimentation after her breakup with her long-time girlfriend, who since then underwent an f-to-m transition. Each chapter opens on a black page acting as a curtain, featuring only the title in block letters—respectively, “enthusiasm,” “addiction,” “boredom,” and “rejection”—and a porthole through which a different sex toy emerges each time. The story features a four-colour palette—white/black/light pink/dark pink— except for the flashbacks concerning the protagonist’s ex-girlfriend, illustrated in a white/black/grey trichrome.

80  Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi Portolano’s trait—her graphiation (Marion 1993)—constantly modulates the number of details depicted throughout the story, often allowing the reader to recognize the settings—several views of Bologna and Naples—but also frequently isolating the characters in a milky, empty white. This visual dialectic between proximity and solitude, connection, and isolation, mirrors the two emotional poles towards which the protagonist oscillates: on the one hand, an individualistic search for physical experiences, meant as a self-determination act where she purposefully chooses to be her own emotional focus. This implies a firm rejection of the potential romantic underpinning of dating, as remarked by the many claims that the protagonist makes: “we spent one night together, but that didn’t make me interested in knowing anything about him” (Portolano 2017, 35); “why does one have to pretend that every hook-up is a potential love story?” (133); “will you make me cum a lot, without having to feel like my boyfriend and without judging me?” (200). On the other hand, though, she betrays a continuous tension towards affection and attachment, the need for some sort of social and affective bonding and keeps chasing experiences that are (loosely) romantic. This is well expressed by the protagonist sexting in bed while wearing a “hug me” t-shirt (24), by her stating that “it’s just casual sex but at the same time it does originate some kind of feeling” (162), or, even more significantly, that “if I had to take stock, I’d say that all the men I’ve met online have left me something. To an odd degree, I’ve loved almost all of them” (195; see Figure 5.2). Occasionally, these antithetical desires result in unexpressed tensions that give rise to ambivalent behaviours, like when she dismisses the one person she kept dating for a while with a caustic “life is too short to be slowed down by someone who will never keep up with you” (122). This ambivalence further complicates one’s reading of the text. Sure, the key claim concerns a reappropriation of the freedom of choice of a female subject openly endowed with full agency; it is meant to free the sphere of female sexuality from an intricate web of patriarchal legacies, such as the explicitly mentioned “Catholic heritage” (58) or her father’s retrogressive ideas—“if you keep behaving like this, no one will marry you,” (72). Those are also exemplified by the aggressive approaches she receives on Tinder (23), by the man who justifies his poor, self-centred sexual performance by saying “my girlfriend never complained” (127), or by the group of men unpleasantly commenting on some women’s Tinder profiles (187–189). This position is strengthened by significant narrative and visual choices: the story always being focalized through the perception of the protagonist, resulting in our closeness to her; the visible attempts to embody the much-discussed female gaze—as opposed to Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze (1975)—leading to the absence of a voyeuristic sexualization of the many naked bodies—appreciably, non-canonical ones. The choice to re-signify the omnipresent colour pink out of its supposed tie with stereotypical images of femininity; the effort to free the dating apps from the ethical stigma which they still frequently undergo—more strongly so when used by women—which labels their use as a symptom of a dehumanizing, mechanical sexual urge. Moreover, the stress is on the protagonist’s use of the various sexual

Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves 81

Figure 5.2  Non so chi sei. Copyright: Cristina Portolano, Rizzoli Lizard (2017, 195).

relationships as a coping strategy in a period of crisis, a transition period after the end of her relationship and her mother’s death. Yet, despite these quasi-pedagogical purposes, the text seems to point to a contradiction in the desiring tension embedded in its protagonist. On the one hand, she aims for freedom, autonomy, and sex for sex’s sake, with little sharing and intimacy with the partner. On the other hand, she does crave para-affective relationships, in which partners cuddle and sleep spooning, although part and parcel of their attractiveness lie precisely in their transient nature. Moreover, the contemporary demand to enjoy, which Guido Mazzoni, quoting Lacan, calls the “discourse of the capitalist,” “an obligation to enjoy, to sacrifice everything in the name of enjoyment” (2015, 14), is criticized as leading to an excessive individuality, perfectly symbolized by the fading of the panel showing a man fingering the protagonist into one where there’s only her figure in the same position, isolated and floating in the white void (Portolano 2017, 66). This goes hand in hand with a clever reflection on how dating apps allow for an exacerbated performativity and commodification of sexual choice—what Illouz calls the “liberal ideology of ‘choice’” (2007, 201)—that may become overwhelming.

82  Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi Although the adoption of a framing structure should suggest a resolution (however precarious) centred on a hedonistic and pacified experimentation, then, the ending is more likely to be more ambivalent. To be fulfilling, relationships must offer something more than the sole enjoyment promised and highlighted by the frequent textual references to the uplifting offered by sentimental chemistry: endorphins (Portolano 2017, 21), adrenaline (69), and sexting as “the only thing that could cheer [one] up” (39); indeed, such an hedonic path often follows the same progression introduced by the book chapters, from enthusiasm to rejection. The relational third way enacted by the protagonist—treasuring something from anyone she has met online, even “loving” most of them—seems instead to enact a working compromise, an attempt to stay open to the encounter with the other, the only event capable of “dehabitualizing and denarcissifying” (Han 2017, 45–46) one’s perspective.

Call you maybe: Rita Petruccioli’s Ti chiamo domani Ti chiamo domani is the first graphic novel single-authored by Rita Petruccioli, after Frantumi (with Giovanni Masi, 2017), in parallel with the illustrations realized for several books, especially for children. Its first panel opens in a dark bedroom. The caption reads: “Toulouse, yesterday.” On the wall, a Pulp Fiction poster; on the door, a reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Dora Maar. Scattered around the room, a hiking backpack and a woman’s handbag, a mismatched sock, an open book, some loose papers. In the bed, two female figures sleeping with their backs to each other (see Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3  Ti chiamo domani. Copyright: Rita Petruccioli, Bao Publishing (2019, 1, 51).

Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves 83 Since this incipit, the protagonist of the story, Chiara, is shown as embodying an in-between, precarious dimension: she is an art student who spent an Erasmus year in Toulouse and is currently wondering what to do with her life. She has just come back for some days to visit her friends. This premise gives rise to a complex chronological structure, in which different temporal planes chase each other through a series of flashbacks that gradually complete and clarify themselves. We learn that Chiara’s life crisis is entwined with the crisis of her sentimental relationship. The same scene from page one appears again, almost identical, 50 pages later, with a caption that this time reads: “I’ll call you tomorrow” (Petruccioli 2019, 51). Chiara said those words the night before, when Kevin, who she was dating during her Erasmus, asked her to follow him to Paris, where he would work as an architect. She rapidly accepted and promised to call him the day after, but then called her father instead, getting a lift on a truck to immediately return home, without saying anything to Kevin. Most of the story afterwards follows her journey with Daniele, the truck driver who brings her home. Since Chiara’s first dialogue with Kevin, the reader can sense the difference between them: Chiara is fluid, mobile, curious. It only seems natural that she took part in the Erasmus programme—a period of new things to see and experience for people in their 20s, whose identity is yet undefined and malleable. Furthermore, for Chiara, as for many Italians (Billari and Tabellini 2010), it implied having her first experience living abroad and alone rather than with her parents. Maybe even more than that condensed dose of independence, though, the peculiarity of the Erasmus period lies in its intermediate, heterotopic condition where young people are out of joint, oscillating in their relation to their new setting, between belonging and feeling like outsiders, missing home, and enjoying their novel freedom, living the moment, and planning ahead, often towards a further displacement. Chiara does perceive the problematic nature of this constant novelty and changeability, and she has her way to exorcize it— if only by symbolically appropriating and personalizing the places she sleeps in with decorations and trinkets that signal that, wherever she is, she is home (Petruccioli 2019, 97–99). Kevin, on the other hand, immediately presents himself as a normalizing, restraining force: despite having met Chiara during the Erasmus, he offers her a more linear, steady path that would imply re-establishing a power relation and reconstituting a familiar bond. He already decided to go to Paris and wants her to go there expressly to join him. More significantly, the switch in his relationship with Chiara—from a fluid, undefined, ambiguous one to a more canonically sentimental one—happened via his unilateral imposition, through a non-consensual drunken intercourse. The episode is reluctantly shown, despite its extension in terms of page length (68–77), with a quasi-monochromatic palette—first dark, then white—and an apparent matter-of-factness that hides the gaps in the recounting and complexifies the immediacy of its decoding at a first read. This irruption of the theme of violence as not akin but antithetical to conflict— seen as a continuous re-discussion and problematization of positions,

84  Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi boundaries, and affordances—will be mirrored in the complex character of Daniele, the truck driver whose wife, we will discover, was murdered by his own cousin. At first, Daniele seems hostile and judgmental, anchored to a scale of values different from Chiara’s and in this regard akin to Kevin’s more stereotypically patriarchal characteristics. The tachograph with which truck drivers keep track of their movements then looks like his offshoot, an objective correlative of his own attempt to scan, measure and exert control on the space/time, to make it linear and navigable. In fact, the tachograph rather highlights the chronotope of the journey, a multi-faceted motif encompassing the idea of middle state and displacement, and that of advancing towards what’s new and unknown. During this journey, Daniele’s character changes connotation twice: firstly, through the reference to his experiences with drugs, which qualifies him as an explorer of life even in its disordered, hedonistic, dangerous aspects; secondly, when he recounts his wife’s story. In the aftermath of her murder, Daniele is believed to be guilty by the police and his hometown’s citizens. Learning about his innocence, we can appreciate how he occupies the opposite position than Kevin in the semiotic square of truth: Kevin is perceived as non-threatening—by their friends and, initially, by the implied reader—, but he is an actor of physical and symbolic violence; Daniele is perceived as threatening—by Chiara, by the reader, by his fellow citizens and truck drivers—but he is not. It is through this unveiling that Daniele’s figure truly changes sign, re-signifying his distant silences as the bearing of a suffering past that re-emerges whenever he stops to look at the prison where his cousin is locked up, every time he drives past it. This restrained, conflictual drive becomes the key to understanding Daniele’s initial hostility and rigidity and is somehow embodied by Chiara’s character, who grows in firmness and agency by the end of the story. The increased closeness towards Daniele is mediated by Chiara acting not only as a focalizer but as a proxy for the implied reader; we can see it in the very last scene, where the vision of the Fortezza Bastiani (from Buzzati’s novel The Tartar Steppe, 1952), filtered through her perception, symbolizes her final alignment to Daniele’s apparently distant sensibility. The intertext referencing the Fortezza, which appears several times, eventually acts, then, not only as the symbol of an intermediate stage between past and future, of the immobile outpost of tradition close to a changing and evolving boundary, of an elusive present full of—not yet fulfilled—possibilities but also as the site of a continuous potential conflict. This inbetweenness, this compromise formation to which the entire graphic novel seems to be devoted, will then ultimately be sublimated by both Daniele and Chiara; the former will never act out his revenge towards his cousin, and the latter will take the full decision to reclaim her destiny and go to Paris alone to attend an art school. Her promise to “call [Kevin] tomorrow” will be neglected—as Daniele’s intentions of revenge—not by repression but by channelling that turbulence into a productive power, capable of unsticking her existential and sentimental crisis. Whether for good, we do not know.

Precarious Lives, Precarious Loves 85

Conclusion Love in times of social precarity is an existential and political battleground for the female subject. This is clearly illustrated in the graphic novels analyzed in this chapter, where women are portrayed as those in charge of negotiating between a new model of freedom anchored to the neoliberal dogma of individualism (rhizomatic love) and the old patriarchal paradigm of sentimental stability (linear love). Despite proposing different levels of proximity to either model, the female protagonists of the three books inhabit—and symbolically open up to—an in-between space where emotional ties neither lead to a rigid crystallization, nor completely liquefy or disappear. This scenario is conveyed by thematic and stylistic choices that the authors operate, creating an ex-centric space that avoids firmness and, at the same time, rejects un-directed movement. Similarly, in these graphic novels, time is neither represented as a linear continuation that brings teleologically from the past to the future nor as an eternal and futureless presence in the here and now. The relationships depicted in the texts are instead inscribed in a time that, with Franco Berardi, we can describe as “the process of becoming other of every fragment in every other fragment, forever” (2017, “Introduction”). In this conception of time, unequivocally devoted to the flow of the present, future persists as a desire for the (always relational) encounter with the difference, as a set of possibilities that can be enacted by means of the subject’s agency and will—her “potency,” Berardi would say. However, as Morini puts it and as our graphic novelists confirm, possibility and potency are a risky matter for the precarious subject, who might see herself sinking in a sea of choices that can, paradoxically, end up depriving the individual of her agency, thus co-opting her to the capitalist ethos of a marketplace-like selection (2010, 39–41). According to Morini, the only way out of this impasse, the only way for the precarious subject to re-appropriate her potency, is through the enactment of conflict (43–44). Conflict, or if we prefer, a continuous, challenging dialectic with the other, is crucial in each of the texts studied here, as it is precisely the element that allows the female protagonists to (re)build themselves as relational subjects equipped with the imaginative strength to envision new possibilities for sexual and sentimental bonds. This capacity to creatively overcome the theoretical polarization between rhizomatic and linear love, this capacity to inhabit the in-between, is, already, a political act if we believe, as we do, that “political action is mutual desire for another way of living—a more just world aligned with eros at every level” (Han 2017, 44).

Notes 1. A two-handed article is always the result of conceptual sharing and much re-reading, discussing and re-writing. However, Nicoletta Mandolini wrote the introduction, the first and second sections and the conclusion; Giorgio Busi Rizzi wrote the third, fourth and fifth sections. This work is financed by Portugal national funds through FCT— Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the project UIDB/00736/2020, and by a BOF fellowship (01P03819) awarded by Ghent University.

86  Nicoletta Mandolini and Giorgio Busi Rizzi 2. According to the national statistics institute, 31.5% of Italian women between 16 and 70 years of age suffered some form of physical violence (ISTAT 2015). 3. The most notable example is Zerocalcare’s work—Macerie prime (2017) and Macerie prime—sei mesi dopo (2018)—whose plot centre around a group of friends struggling with their work, financial, and emotional precariousness. 4. Putino (2011, 69). All translations from Italian are ours, unless otherwise stated. 5. We chose not to discuss non-binary and transgender authors, such as Nicoz Balboa of Fumettibrutti, for we would not have had the proper space to delve into the theoretical, existential, and political complexities that concur to, and complicate, the precariousness of love when associated with the process of gender transitioning.

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Part II

The Young Self in Crisis in (Auto)Biographic Comics

6

Uncertain Homes Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies from the “Children’s Homes” in the Czech Republic Andrea Hoff

Introduction The removal of these children from their niche led to the severing of emotional, physical, topographical, and cultural bonds, their lives turning into an endless wait for a brighter future that often did not dawn on them. (Ganguly 2020, 59) I am a success story. I made it through the system … Most kids never rekindle their family connections. I did, but before that, I lost some family forever—one of my sisters was adopted and no one knows how to find her, my other sister wants nothing to do with my family … I was never able to form an emotionally fulfilling and loving relationship with my father and for a long time not even with my mother. (Michal Dord, in correspondence with the author, May 3, 2021) Though these two statements come from far-reaching sides of the globe— Australia and the Czech Republic, respectively—they could easily be describing the same set of experiences, the same place, and the same echoes of an institutionalized childhood that permeate deep into the adult life of the individuals who have experienced them. This chapter explores the specific experiences of two young men who grew up in state-run orphanages—referred to as “Children’s Homes,” or  Dětské domovy  in Czech—in the Czech Republic in two volumes of the comic book series Uncertain Homes (2016) by collective Ašta Šmé. Ašta Šmé is a collective of social scientists, Romani scholars, and artists. Their mission is to develop creative, analytical, cultural, and educational collaborations between academics, activists, and artists. This chapter explores two comics from the series, Stronger Than Some (2016) and Don’t be a Gadjo! (2016). These comics delve into two very different experiences of Roma children—Honza in Stronger Than Some and Michal in Don’t be a Gadjo!—as they negotiate life during and after their formative years spent in a number of state-run orphanages in the Czech Republic. This chapter explores the unique way in which comics DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-9

92  Andrea Hoff form is well suited to the biographical nature of these works, through the use of first-person narratives, and in the combined visual-textual language articulating the experiences, memory, identity, and vulnerability of the protagonists. This analysis lends a universal quality to the enquiry of these specific works, aligning them with an emerging genre of contemporary comics that deal with institutionalized childhoods, especially those of forced and state-sanctioned institutionalization. The graphic biographical accounts of children growing up in institutionalized homes are narratives that are being created—and, at long last, being listened to— around the globe. Currently, there exist graphic novels documenting the experiences of survivors from the residential school system in Canada, works such as 7Generations (2012) and Sugar Falls (2012) by David Alexander Robertson and Jason EagleSpeaker’s UNeducation: A Residential School Graphic Novel (2014). There are also emerging narratives from the Stolen Generation of Indigenous children in Australia (Ganguly 2020), and individual comics works exploring abuse at boarding schools, such as Glen Head’s autobiographical account of his own experiences in Chartwell Manor (2021). In this vein, this chapter examines the implications of growing up in state-run Children’s Homes from the perspective of survivors. It specifically looks at the cultural implications of being both Roma and Czech, in a culture where the former is at best less valued and, in the worst case, purposefully erased (Haun 2000). This chapter further explores the specific cultural and existential vulnerabilities associated with childhood trauma, as told from an adult perspective. The access point of the analysis is through the visual, by focusing on page composition, visual style, and comics’ unique graphic cues depicting experiences of trauma. Not only are lived experiences considered, but also the legacy of trauma experienced by a young generation of Czech Roma: people who grew up separated from their families and their cultural ties. The visual-spatial use of fracture and unique visual compositions of solitude and vulnerability are further explored. The ways are examined in which—through the medium of comics—a profound sense of loss and separation from community experienced by the young protagonists is articulated as well as a deep understanding of what this loss entails, for it is in great part those with whom we associate that we develop our self-identity.

Uncertain Homes: A collaborative comics project Ašta Šmé, founded in Prague in 2008, is a collective representing a variety of academic fields, including cultural anthropology, ethnology, and Romani studies. It includes artists and writers who produce collaborative works on themes engaged in issues of social justice relevant to the Czech Republic. These include cultural diversity, social inequality, and the process of social exclusion and constructed identity. To date, the collective has created several projects that are focused primarily on biographical and autobiographical comics. The visual-textual narratives, drawn from real-life stories and lived

Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies 93 experiences, are generated by the protagonists in each work, who collaborate closely with Ašta Šmé throughout the project development through to completion. Ašta Šmé was motivated to create a series of comics exploring the childhood experiences of young adults who grew up in the foster care system, especially those who lived in state-run orphanages. We wanted to make these stories into comics because of who it could reach. Do people read reports about the experiences in the Children’s Homes? Do young people read these reports? With comics, these stories could find new audiences and they could reach much farther. By “showing” the worlds of these invisible children, the children (now adults) could also share deeper levels of their own stories and not disappear further into forgotten files. (Markéta Hajská of Ašta Šmé, in correspondence with the author, June 5, 2021)

Being Roma in the Czech Republic In establishing a context for the comics project Uncertain Homes, it is necessary to review the treatment of the Romani minority population in the Czech Republic. Haun (2000) does not mince words: “Roma, perhaps more than any other ethnic group, have faced incessant discrimination and persecution throughout Europe for as long as they have resided there” (1185). This point is further exemplified by Oravcova and Slacalek (2020), who outline the prejudices held against the Roma in the Czech Republic. The anti-Roma actions have deep roots and are far-reaching: Being an object of repressive paternalism of the Czechoslovak Communist party meant forced employment for the Roma community, and also suppression of Roma self-organization and forced sterilization of Roma women. After the Velvet revolution in 1989, Roma faced high unemployment, racist attacks and often even loss of citizenship … Roma are underrepresented in various segments of politics and culture which corresponds with their low social power and insecurities in their identity constructions. (929) Clearly, the situation is not new. Over the past three decades, the Czech Republic has been criticized regarding its treatment of the Roma living within its borders, and in 2004 it was one of the contentious issues brought to the international stage when the republic made its application to join as a nation state of the European Union (Marden 2004). In fact, the subjugation of the Roma in the Czech Republic has even more ancient origins. Many historians believe ancestors of the Roma began their initial migrations towards Europe

94  Andrea Hoff around 1000 CE and they have faced discrimination in many of the regions they inhabited. Multiple forms of discriminatory practices have been enacted against the Roma; these include segregated living, employment, education, and segregation in the use of public facilities over the course of many generations (Haun 2000). Since 1989, the Czech Republic has had a constitutional guarantee against discrimination based on race (Marden 2004). That said, an attitude based on biased constructs persists to this day and is expressed in policies and attitudes against the Roma (Laubeová 2002). Against these discriminatory headwinds, Roma-activists, advocates, and scholars work to dismantle the implicit and explicit inequitable practices against the Romani population, ensuring that the Czech Republic continues to improve their conditions for Roma (Marden 2004). One of the far-reaching practices which has bearing on this work is the segregated schooling of Roma children, and especially the removal of Roma children from their families of origin into state-run orphanages. This happens— though with less frequency in the past decade (Bhabha 2021)—at a much higher rate than it does for non-Roma Czechs (Cviklová 2015). Although many actions have been taken to advocate for the rights of Roma, a deep mistrust between the Roma community and the Czech government is still evident. By many standards—education, health-care access, judicial power, and economic viability—the Roma continue to live on the fringes of many European communities (Haun 2000).

Graphic biographies Each story in the Uncertain Homes series offers a unique portal into the experiences of children in the Czech Republic who grew up separated from their families of origin. Stronger Than Some and Don’t be a Gadjo! focus specifically on the experiences of Roma children within the state-run orphanages, revealing mechanisms of a divided society and stories left untold. In Stronger Than Some, although Honza entered the orphanage at the age of five, he cannot remember his family or life before. He states: “It’s as if I was born at the age of six. At the first institution, it’s possible there were no adults there at all, nothing but children” (Ašta Šmé & Pokorný 2016, 8). By the age of eight, Honza has already been placed in an institute with stricter supervision and is subsequently transferred several more times. As the reader, along with Honza, we experience the alienating environment of these institutions, where power structures are based primarily on punishments. We delve into the world of children’s fights and bullying and watch Honza’s difficulties concentrating, his explosive tantrums, and his eventual attempts at escape. Finally, we watch as Honza leaves for his long-awaited freedom, we see him struggle with his demons and try to fulfil his longing—to live an ordinary life (Ašta Šmé & Pokorný 2016). In Don’t be a Gadjo! the title of the work comes from a Romani saying, warning their children and each other not to become a gadjo—gadje or

Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies 95 gadjo refers to anyone who is not Romani. It is thought that if Roma spend too much time away from their people and their culture, they will become un-Roma or a gadjo (Haun 2000). Michal grew up in an orphanage, and much like Honza, he does not remember a time before his institutional care. He is placed in a relatively small facility where he becomes attached to a kind woman working there, whom he refers to as Aunt Sÿkorová. Though Michal does not remember the experiences in his childhood to have been overtly negative, now that he is an adult, he is critical of the removal of Roma children from their original families. Michal also recognizes that much of his success in the orphanage and later in his professional life is directly related to having a grounded, family-like connection with Aunt Sÿkorová (Ašta Šmé & Loubat 2016). When we consider the unique function of graphic biographies and what can be achieved through this form, it is in the meeting of the audience with the visual layers and the biographic testament that is both nuanced and rich ground for enquiry. “No other art form gives so much to its readers while asking so much from them as well. Comics are not a mere hybrid of graphic arts and prose fiction” (McCloud 3, 92), but a unique interpretation that transcends both and emerges through the imaginative work of closure that readers are required to make between the panels on the page (McCloud 3). Each comic offers glimpses through a child’s eyes into both the experience at the Children’s Homes and a simplified analogue of time and memory. The brevity of the stories and the ways in which the reader follows the children through their life experiences—in the case of Honza and Michal from childhood into the near-present day—speak to the echoes of trauma that express themselves all the way into adulthood and the ways it can be portrayed through graphic means. What is more, those experiences can be understood through a linear progression from simple to more complex, mirroring the progressive evolution of childhood understandings into those of an adult. Documented in visual-textual form, readers are offered an adult point-of-view, framed by the retracing of the trauma from early childhood into maturity. The process of remembering and of reforming childhood memories so that they can be shared in comics form signals that this story has always been viewed from an adult perspective. Consequently, the reader—and, importantly, the protagonists of each comic—reorder the experiences, to apply new meaning to the process of remembering and reforming the structures that are still in place, haunting the lives of many institutional survivors. This is particularly vivid in the final full-page spread at the end of Stronger Than Some, which depicts the members of Ašta Šmé sitting in a room listening to Honza tell his story. The scene is depicted from a high angle, as if the reader—acting as witness to the event—is perched in a far corner of the room—a metaphorical fly on the wall—watching this group of adults discuss the intimate details of a life. Following the concept of audience as co-creator (Scanlon 2015), this spread in particular offers “[t]he collaboration of words and images in mutual connection and … establishes the multimodal structure of compositions, assuming the audience as co-collaborators” (Jirásek 2020, 2). Around the edges of the frame,

96  Andrea Hoff artist Marek Pokorný has included a series of eight small frames, all very small, very adult moments: an espresso being poured into a cup, a sound recorder running over 45 minutes, a few crumbs on an empty plate, Markéta taking a photo of Honza on a digital camera, Honza in close-up profile, and Honza with his eyes closed in deep contemplation. These final pages explore the psychological implications of childhood trauma as a continuing narrative; they also indicate that it is possible to move beyond trauma through “owning” one’s own personal narrative.

Fragmentation and fracture In the context of comics form, we can understand “fracture” as comics’ ability to visually reveal its own architecture, both through panel- and page-construction and metafictive elements within the narrative. The very way in which a narrative is fractured and then reassembled by the reader is part of the agreement we make as we traverse the visual-textual path (or paths) of the comic. “[Comics’] basic infrastructure of grids, panels, frames and gutters index graphically, on the very surface of the page, the processes by which narrative is constructed” (Menga & Davies 2020, 670). Similarly, Lisa Diedrich views comics as “a kind of assemblage [which is] formed and unformed in time and space” (2016, 98). In aligning fracture, and in turn assemblage, within comics, we can see too that within the context of these graphic stories, other more literal definitions of fracture can be applied, not only from a comics-structural point of view but regarding the subject matter and themes embedded within these biographical stories. Fracture in the visual sense can be understood within the context of comics assemblage—the way in which moments in the narrative are broken up through the panelling, pieces of the narrative that the reader must traverse and reassemble anew— and as Charles Hatfield refers to the “multiple, fragmented, and discontinuous resistance to coherence” (2005, xiii) that is inherent within the comics form. However, it is also a psychological tool, one that explores the inner narrative of experience within the Children’s Home. The use of visual fragmentation in Stronger Than Some allows us to see the anguish, confusion, and literal break that Honza experiences when he is upset or provoked into anger. The images themselves fracture and fragment, as does the composition of the characters within them (see Figure 6.1). In this way, through his pictures, Pokorný captures Honza’s internal experience and inserts it directly into the narrative. Especially telling, the fragmentation of the images depicting Honza’s outbursts is that much more powerful, given that they illustrate how very little control young Honza has over his reactions to these situations. It is not until after the experience is over that Honza can contemplate his actions and realize how differently he experiences the world from many of the other more “well behaved” children at the orphanage. And yet, as readers, we empathize with how “beyond his control” and confusing his reactions are, especially to him.

Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies 97

Figure 6.1  Stronger Than Some, pp. 18–19. Source: Illustrated by Marek Pokorný. Ašta Šmé, 2016.

In Don’t Be a Gadjo!, Michal’s experiences take on a visual fracture as well during moments of intense emotion, through the visualizing of disembodiment. Artist Františka Loubat transitions the visual narrative from rhythmic black-and-white panel layouts to images without panels, then to characters without settings, and eventually to only parts of characters: lips curled around a cigarette, an eye welling with tears, a whorl of smoke escaping from an ashtray. In this way, the two stories use fracture to align the reader with different components of the story: for Honza the fracture aligns us with his interior world, and we don’t see his reaction but how he experienced it; for Michal, fracture works to align the reader with his point of view, we “see” what he remembers; our eyes land on the same pieces of the story that he has reassembled from his past.

Solitude The visual-spatial use of solitude is explored here in a different context than that of fracture, where fracture separates, visually and emotionally, the visual cues of solitude articulate a sense of loss, and isolation. As Michal’s opening statement makes clear, he still felt lonely after his family reunification, and this solitude continues to resonate “[o]n an emotional level due to trauma, [through a] lack of history and shared experiences …” (Michal Dord, in correspondence with the author, May 3, 2021). Michal also sees that a lack of shared cultural connections function in a public history as well, especially when this solitude is juxtaposed

98  Andrea Hoff not only with his own family but also with the acknowledged traditional Roma values of community and multi-generational living. Throughout Stronger Than Some, solitude acts as a metaphor, through both the comics’ visual composition and as a narrative device. As Honza attempts to escape many of the institutions to which he is sent as a child, we see him fleeing through empty farmlands. As an adult, living in England, solitude continues to play a significant role both in Honza’s life and in the visual language of the comics. When Honza, as an adult, is threatened by a man at the boarding house where he is living, we see him leaving the encounter to travel—as a mirror to his childhood journeys fleeing the orphanages—through empty streets and fields devoid of people, again a small solitary figure set into a wide-angled view of a lonely world (see Figure 6.2). As we follow his journey through the landscape of farms and forests, the page opens to depict him standing on the very edge of a high white cliff. The destination of his journey brings him to the balancing edge of a precarious moment—one of repetition, of completion, and of contemplation. As in an earlier childhood experience of falling through the ice, here, as an adult, Honza is again confronted with a life-threatening situation: he is alone, surrounded by a precarious version of the natural world. The visual cues remind us of the fine balance of a life, of how one can feel both its magnitude and insignificance, and of the way in which the past travels with us through our childhood experiences into a world that does not leave the past behind. This level of the narrative chronicles Honza’s specific

Figure 6.2  Stronger Than Some, pp. 28–29. Source: Illustrated by Marek Pokorný. Ašta Šmé, 2016.

Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies 99 vulnerability that expresses itself into young adulthood, but it is also a universal meditation on the ghosts of childhood traumas, large and small, that haunt us all. We see “solitude” represented repeatedly throughout Stronger Than Some, to the point of it being a motif on both psychological and experiential levels. The frequent use of framing through high-angle longshots emphasizes the solitary experience of the protagonist, Honza, as he flees one of many state-run Children’s Homes, but it also presupposes a metaphorical longing for connection in the face of great isolation. The young figure appears in a barren and dangerous natural world—cold, isolating, and potentially lethal. The wintery landscape represents the world at large, as well as it foregrounds the precariousness of what awaits children growing up within these foster-care institutions. The fragmented long panels on the second half of the spread work to further separate the protagonist within the very structure of the narrative, implicating the reader and predicting the dangers of children alone in the world. Not only does the high angle work to punctuate Honza’s predicament, but it separates us as the viewers/readers from his experience, as we watch from above, rather than experiencing it with Honza at his level. In this way, we are in fact more aligned with a surveillance of the scene, yet deftly also implicated in the events, too far away to help him, yet a constant witness to the actions and outcome.

Vulnerability Throughout Stronger Than Some we witness the vulnerability of young Honza, so often, in fact, that the precariousness of his daily life can be read as a running motif throughout the comic. Not only does one of his escapes conclude in him falling through the ice, but the framing of that incident is crafted into a repetitive and hyper-fragmented visual representation. As Honza slips further below the ice, the images repeat in an almost film-like staccato, distancing the reader from the action and reducing Honza within his own narrative, in the final panel showing only cracked ice and the word, “HEEELP” coming from a tiny figure mostly submerged in the freezing water. The comics form, with its interwoven visual-textual narrative format, not only offers the potential for a multi-sensory medium well adapted for processing trauma or reproducing it (Chute 2016) but also as a platform in which to place memories and to order the often-disjunctive moments comprising traumatic events, especially when those are not necessarily contained within childhood. The comics form becomes a vessel for both reproducing and reprocessing traumatic childhood events; the looming vulnerability as experienced by both boys within the orphanages, and the associated trauma, are mirrored within the visual composition. It seems at times that even within the good experiences of the boys, precarity always lurks in shadows. This mirroring can be clearly seen in the spread featuring Honza’s one-and-only letter from his mother (see Figure 6.3). Beginning in the top left, we witness the excited young boy racing to open the letter and then reading it. It is simple, stating only, “Dear Honza, I’m fine. I’m 170 cm high.

100  Andrea Hoff

Figure 6.3  Stronger Than Some, pp. 16–17. Source: Illustrated by Marek Pokorný. Ašta Šmé, 2016.

I weigh 60 kg. I am 39 years old” (Ašta Šmé & Pokorný 2016, 16). Beneath the writing is a childlike outline of his mother’s hand. Not only is this letter format one that Honza later adapts in his own response letters to his mother—all of which go unanswered—but the mirror of this handprint on the other side of the spread takes the form of shadow hands with an unmistakably sinister reading, so much so that the spread concludes with Honza, represented in shadow form, erupting into an uncontrollable fit of rage. In the second to last panel the words “HELP!” dominate the panel and are silhouetted by two closed fists; the final panel simply a block of solid black. As Kumar and Multani point out in their work on childhood trauma, “[t] hese disruptive and invasive events bring to the fore the vulnerability of a child while also reinforcing the discourse that a child’s consciousness differs from an adult, that childhood is not an unproblematic biological qualifier but a particular cultural phrasing, historically and politically contingent” (2019, 2). In Disaster Drawn, Hilary Chute (2016) reasons that it is precisely because comics are a visually fractured form of retelling that they provide such a powerful medium for translating traumatic life experiences. Aligning the mechanics of graphic novels with the multiplicity of traumas that result from institutionalized care, we can observe that it is not a single action but rather the accumulation of events—and specifically the ways in which one traumatic experience leads to another—that creates the multiplicity of traumas. Birk (2020) states: “if we agree that trauma is marked by incomprehensibility and unassimilability,

Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies 101 then trauma narratives dramatize the epistemological crisis that emerges when we try to represent an experience that defies symbolization” (498). In this way we can see some of the visual cues within the two comics as a repetition of events, actions, and expectations that result in sustained trauma for the two boys. Examples of these visual cues in Michal’s story include the repetition of documents; importantly, these are official documents that at times contradict Michal’s remembered experience or counter the narratives which he later learns about from his family members once they are reunited. This juxtaposition works to challenge the supposed legitimacy of official documentation against that of remembered experiences and provides a secondary level of narrative to Michal’s story. Ahmed and Crucifix point out that the “documentary value of comics has often been overlooked, perhaps precisely because their indexical relationship to the past always bears the mark of its medial opacity” (2018, 8). Further, Hilary Chute reasons that “comics openly eschews any aesthetic of transparency; [as] it is a conspicuously artificial form” (2016, 192). And yet, “the comics form literalizes the work of archiving: selecting, sorting, and containing in boxes” (192). A unique and direct approach is taken in looking at the way in which the archive and the document are articulated in Don’t Be a Gadjo!. Michal’s story is interspersed with court documents, official documents, and written statements which he began to collect through access-to-information requests he made as he began his quest to reconnect with his family of origin. Many of the documents work to present a remembered scene in direct comparison with the “official” information contained within the documents. In this way, the direct inclusion of the documentation of his life and his reproduced memories are laid bare for the reader to both engage with and decide which version to trust. Considering these comics as both “memory vessels” and in “terms of archives and styles enables us to examine different materialities—ranging from the drawn line to the covers of the book, to the potential of embodiment inscribed in personal stories—while accounting for the scaffolding of memories that are propping up the stories themselves” (Ahmed & Crucifix 2018, 3). Research indicates that it is through narrative that trauma is re-experienced and cognitively processed (Luckhurst 2008). This, according to Birk (2020), is because “trauma itself resists verbal symbolization and frustrates the signifying process, the incorporation of visual imagery in comics allows for another register of representation” (500). Within the research of trauma narratives, there exists a distinction between the act of narrating as a means of understanding experiences, and narration as an approach to contain (and master) experiences. The latter mode is potentially dangerous to participants, “[f]or if traumatic experience is inaccessible and unavailable for psychic integration, then it is important for trauma narrative to resist the fantasy that it can be mastered emotionally and cognitively” (500). This view of trauma, as it applies to the lived experiences within the Children’s Homes, is one that is compounded through time and repetition.

102  Andrea Hoff In the relationship that exists between the experience of trauma and the narratives it spawns, the use of comics assemblage can be seen as a way to understand and “fracture” the experience of trauma (Birk 2020; Luckhurst 2008) and not as an attempt to master or contain it (Birk 2020). In other words, it is through the scaffolded architecture of comics—the way in which the reader experiences the story both in pieces and all at once—that the narrative layers of trauma may be revealed. As with trauma narratives, there exists a tension between the desire to make sense of the multiplicity of narratives and being aware of the impossibility of this task. Understood this way, the expression of trauma narratives in comics documents the complexity of creating both a personal and a global narrative while simultaneously acknowledging the impossibility of the task. A final aspect of the disruption that trauma induces can be seen clearly in the representation of “The Institution” depicted in the visual as an ever-present character for both Michal and Honza. “The Institution” is often represented in stories recounting the removal of children from their families of origin and can often be seen as both a perpetrator of abuse and as a silent witness to it (Head 2021; Robertson & Henderson 2012b). The Institution takes on a dominant role within the visual landscape, to the point of standing in as a character at times even more than a setting. The opening pages of Michal’s story establish not only the location—the Children’s Home where he spent his childhood from the age of three—but also the structure’s dominance in his memory and its authority over him (see Figure 6.4). Unique within the comics

Figure 6.4  Don’t Be a Gadjo!, pp. 12–13. Source: Illustrated by Františka Loubat, Ašta Šmé, 2016.

Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies 103 form, we are offered the opportunity to view the construction of spaces as well as characters within the same visual plane of reference. In both Michal’s and Honza’s stories, The Institution is notable not only by its presence within the narrative but specifically in the use of angles used to frame it in context. At times “The Institution” dominates the page or looms over the characters. At times it is depicted from a birds-eye view, as if the reader is soaring above looking down at the stories and the lives playing out below, drawing attention to the impossibility of the characters within it to achieve that perspective or to soar beyond its reach. As readers, we can assess, through the juxtaposition of architecture and character, what influence each has over the other. When considering the power of an institution, the physical presence of the Children’s Homes plays a significant role in both Stronger Than Some and Don’t Be a Gadjo!.

Conclusion Projects such as Uncertain Homes entwine the personal and the broader social narrative and investigate these stories through a process of discovery and documentation. As Rif kind and Warley state, “remembering in comics can extend beyond the personal and can be a pedagogical project connected to constructions of nation, gender, and race” (2016, 11). Projects such as Uncertain Homes build on the personal as entwined with the public, the private individual narrative as a part of a broader social context. This is an important time to be engaging with visual biographies of children who have grown up in institutions. Comics creators around the globe are grappling with biographical narratives centred on institutionalized childhoods, especially those in which the institutionalization was forced upon a people and/ or a culture, as a means of rewriting identities that were “inconvenient” to powers unwilling to recognize place, rights, and sovereignty of peoples and cultures outside the dominant power structures (Rheault 2020). Comics works such as Uncertain Homes contribute to this emerging genre. Moreover, it engages in the dialogue with other comics such as This Place: 150 Years Retold (Akiwenzie-Damm et al. 2019), 7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga (Robertson & Henderson 2012a), Sugar Falls (Robertson & Henderson 2012b), and UNeducation (EagleSpeaker 2014), to name a few. These works, unique to the comics form, are exploring not only the biographical and autobiographical opportunities provided by visual-textual histories but are also offering a platform to both process and disseminate first-person accounts of often untold histories, histories buried by the dominant culture. As such, comics within this genre offer the potential to be read as counter-narratives to the official documents, experiences, and histories as recorded within the public identities of nation states. In exploring personal stories against a backdrop of larger social narratives such as the institutionalized childhoods of Indigenous and other people around the globe, texts such as these “share a preoccupation with exploring

104  Andrea Hoff how subjects come into being in relation to experiences and events that are both ordinary and extraordinary” (Diedrich 2016, 96). The process of becoming can be understood to be in direct response to the ability to tell these stories, to share them, and for each protagonist, each hero of the story, to “become” through the process. Direct correlations exist not only with processes of becoming as expressed thematically, narratively, and through the affordances in many of the comics, but also on a deeper level: the structure of comics itself can be seen through a lens of becoming. The therapeutic aspect of biographical and autobiographical storytelling in comics form can be understood through its use of non-verbal communication: the visual cues provide a vehicle for sharing memories, thoughts, and feelings not always accessible through words, and the creative process itself can be one of healing, one that can offer creators wellbeing, a deeper sense of self, and access to inner landscapes otherwise inaccessible (Malchiodi 2003; Rolling 2017). In her work in this field, Lotte Darsø (2008) explores agency within arts-based practices and researches the ways in which the creative process itself can spawn new confidences and new desires to explore idea and belief systems. Darsø (2008) connects the ways in which the artefact and the process of creation—that of experiencing materials and experimenting with new forms of meaningmaking—expand competencies. This further supports the duality of comicsbased enquiry in which both the process of creation and the object or artefact created each holds the potential for participants to work through ideas, explore understandings, and produce evidence of their multiple ways of knowing. When considering the impact not only of sharing these stories through comics form but in the creation process itself, the work of Uncertain Homes offers its participants a platform of expression and agency in the process that is unique in its delivery and in its creation. These works are powerful and utilize that power through the comics form, addressing levels of narrative and experience beyond the reach of text alone. Through centring on narratives woven through with the personal and the public, these works reveal, through survivor experiences, the systemic discrimination perpetrated on children, and cultures, at odds with the state.

References Ahmed, Maaheen, and Benoît Crucifix. 2018. Comics Memory: Archives and Styles. New York, NY: Springer International Publishing. https://tinyurl.com/a9hnmepj. Akiwenzie-Damm, Kateri, et al. 2019. This Place: 150 Years Retold. Winnipeg: HighWater Press. Ašta Šmé, and Františka Loubat. 2016. Don’t Be a Gadjo! Prague: Ašta Šmé Press. Ašta Šmé, and Marek Pokorný. 2016. Stronger Than Some. Prague: Ašta Šmé Press. Bhabha, Jacqueline. 2021. “Unfinished Business: The Long Road Ahead to Civil Rights and Roma Rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 43 (1): 197–201. Birk, Tammy. 2020. “Mother, Come Home: Trauma, Time, and Groundskeeping the Disaster.” American Imago 77 (3): 497–531.

Trauma, Fracture and Resilience in Roma Biographies 105 Chute, Hilary. 2016. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cviklová, Lucie. 2015. “Direct and Indirect Racial Discrimination of Roma People in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and the Russian Federation.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (12): 2140–2155. Darsø, Lotte. 2008. “Prologue: Interview with Margaret Wheatley – 7 September 2008.” Journal of Management & Organization 14 (5): 482–485. Diedrich, Lisa. 2016. “Comics and Graphic Narratives.” In The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman, edited by Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini, 96–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316091227. 011. EagleSpeaker, Jason. 2014. UNeducation: A Residential School Graphic Novel. 2nd ed., Uncut version. Calgary: The Connection Press. Ganguly, Somrita. 2020. “Waiting for My Mum to Come Back: Trauma Narratives of Australia’s Stolen Generation.” In Childhood Traumas: Narratives and Representations, edited by Kamayani Kumar and Angelie Multani, 50–6. Abingdon: Routledge. Hatfield, Charles. 2005. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. 1st ed. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Haun, Alyssa. 2000. “The Long Road: The Roma of Eastern and Central Europe and the Freedom of Movement and the Right to Choose a Residence.” George Washington International Law Review 33:155–57. Head, Glenn. 2021. Chartwell Manor: A Comics Memoir. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books. Jirásek, Ivo. 2020. “Holistic Leisure Education through the Czech Rapid Arrows Comics.” Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics 11: 1–15. http://doi.org/10.1080/21504857. 2020.1773884. Kumar, Kamayani, and Angelie Multani. 2019. Childhood Traumas: Narratives and Representations. Abingdon: Routledge India. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429341274. Laubeová, Laura. 2002. “Inclusive School – Myth or Reality.” In Roma Rights, Race, Justice and Strategies for Equality, edited by Claude Cahn, 86–95. Amsterdam: Idea. Luckhurst, Roger. 2008. The Trauma Question. New York, NY: Routledge. Malchiodi, Cathy A., ed. 2003. Handbook of Art Therapy. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Marden, Matthew D. 2004. “Return to Europe? The Czech Republic and the EU’s Influence on its Treatment of Roma.” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 37 (4): 1181. McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishing. Menga, Filippo, and Dominique Davies. 2020. “Apocalypse Yesterday: Posthumanism and Comics in the Anthropocene.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 3 (3), 663–687. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619883468. Oravcova, Anna, and Ondrej Slacalek. 2020. “Roma Youth in Czech Rap Music: Stereotypes, Objectification and ‘Triple Inauthenticity.’” Journal of Youth Studies 23 (7): 926–944. Rifkind, Candida, and Linda Warley, eds. 2016. Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives. Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press.

106  Andrea Hoff Robertson, David, and Scott B. Henderson. 2012a. 7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga. Winnipeg: HighWater Press. ———. 2012b. Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story. Winnipeg: Portage & Main Press. Rolling, James Haywood. 2017. “Art as Therapy.” Art Education (Reston), 70 (5): 4–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2017.1335521. Rheault, Sylvain. 2020. “A Surge of Indigenous Graphic Novels.” Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics 11 (5–6): 501–521. Scanlon, Molly J. 2015. “The Work of Comics Collaborations: Considerations of Multimodal Composition for Writing Scholarship and Pedagogy.” Composition Studies 43 (1): 105–130.

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Finding Voice within the Objects of Their Lives Adolescents Writing Memoir Comics to Interrogate Crisis Michael L. Kersulov

In 2009, I accepted a teaching position at a summer Academy for 15- and 16-year-old gifted and talented students, hosting a literature-based comics course that explored reading, writing, and history of comics. Students wrote their own memoir comics, many revealing narratives of deeply seated emotional turmoil related to their gifted identity that included reports of bullying, physical attacks, and alienation. They presented worlds in which adults and peers perpetually requested productivity while at the same time silencing them. That is, students were overwhelmed with responsibilities but with little to no personal or cultural power. Traditional texts, such as poetry, novels, and plays, call on a linguistic coding system; however, reading and writing comics requires one to interpret non-linguistic cues such as figures, frames, colour, and drawn objects while simultaneously coordinating the imagistic and verbal information (Groensteen 2013). While reading the students’ memoir comics, I noticed the objects they drew, leading me to Pahl and Rowsell’s (2019) theory of Artifactual Literacies (AL). Guided by AL in which objects hold narratives, this chapter presents three focal students’ memoir comics: Laura, Abby, and Derick (all pseudonyms). The focal students’ works speak to the obstacles they face with peers, home and school, and identity. Chute (2017) notes the versatile nature of comics: “Comics has the ability to powerfully layer moments in time” (24). Similarly, in the students’ comics, a tapestry of narratives is presented in which notions of gifted students’ innate preparedness and well-being is dashed. Rather, they expose “giftedness” as a label that brings social and cultural challenges. This chapter provides an outline of AL and literature regarding the precarious nature of giftedness in young lives. After explaining the methods, analysis, and research site, the focal students’ comics are presented and analyzed. Showcasing the students’ comics, three categories of objects emerge: objects of achievement, objects of alienation, and objects of pain. These categories bring insight into the students’ expressions of giftedness and demonstrate how creating comics as cultural artifacts can give voice to difficult experiences. DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-10

108  Michael L. Kersulov

Artifactual literacy Drawing ties between The New London Group’s (1996) work with New Literacies and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) work with multimodality and literacy, AL positions objects as facilitating meaning-making and text-making acts. Pahl and Rowsell define an object or artifact (used interchangeably) as a thing that “has physical features … is created, found, carried, put on display, hidden, evoked in language, or worn … embodies people, stories, thoughts, communities, identities, and experiences, is valued or made by a meaning maker in a particular context” (2019, 2). Literacy practices that use objects (i.e., compositions, writing, comics) and analysis of such practices bring light to meaning and text making practices, specifically in regard to identity, experiences, and social and cultural practices. Pahl and Rowsell explain: Artifacts open up worlds for meaning makers, worlds that are frequently, if not always, silent in formal, institutional settings like schooling. Artifacts link to students’ everyday lives and cultural histories. Artifacts provide the connecting piece—they move, travel across home and school, and these movements provide power to students. (2019, 3) Analysis of the focal students’ work considers how the objects in their comics serve as gateways to stories, memories, and identity—a means to investigate literacy practices that speak to critical experiences regarding their giftedness. Such analysis also considers the unique nature of the comic medium and is guided by Hatfield’s (2005) notion of memoir comic authors depicting shifting personalities and emotional states with visual representations and El Refaie’s (2012) comments on how the comic author can navigate diverse modes of narration and iconography as text, such as speech bubbles, panels, and zip ribbons, while also seamlessly shifting from past and present. Blending comics studies and AL also points to the possible fictional nature of the students’ drawn objects in order to express non-fictional events, memories, and emotions (Kersulov 2016). While the objects the students create, re-create, and present in their work could have been fictional, they come with histories, uses, and social/cultural practices, merging the students’ individual physical and emotional worlds and denoting states of crisis within young gifted students’ lives.

Gifted students in crisis While attention towards the needs of under-represented students in education is growing, in comparison, attentiveness to the crisis that can come with the label of “giftedness” is limited. The United States Elementary and Secondary Education Act defines gifted and talented as: Students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership

Finding Voice within the Objects of Their Lives 109 capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities. (National Association for Gifted Children n.d.) Additionally, research in gifted education has uncovered how emotional, physical, and mental anguish can come with the gifted label. Chan (2003) speaks of gifted students’ struggles regarding perfectionism and the related burden of producing material. Such obstacles go beyond academics. Gross (2004) notes how gifted students are susceptible to feelings of social inadequacy, abandonment, and the inability to communicate with peers. Gifted students can thus be vulnerable to social isolation (Boland and Gross 2007) and emotional and social rejection (Peterson, Duncan, and Canady 2009). As adults in gifted students’ lives might view and celebrate students’ talents as advantageous (Peterson, Duncan, and Canady 2009), it is not uncommon for gifted students to not want to be viewed as extraordinary but would rather have their achievements be due to effort and ability (Kerr, Colangelo, and Gaeth 1988). Considering how non-gifted peers may react to the laurels gifted students may receive, the attention garnered by adults, and the comparison of academic and post-academic earning power (Peterson, Duncan, and Canady 2009), gifted students can become outsiders in the very environment (i.e., the classroom) they excel. This begs the question: do the benefits of giftedness outweigh the social and emotional costs?

Methods and analysis Data collected consists of students’ compositions, drafts, written reflections, semi-structured interviews, teacher field notes, and teaching materials. Analysis began with an inductive process of open coding (Merriam and Tisdell 2015) in order to generate preliminary categories. Shifting from specifics drawn from the data to analytic generalizations (Lincoln and Guba 1985), the constant comparative method (Creswell and Creswell 2017) was used to compare data across focal students. Patterns emerged and axial coding helped locate intersections. The focal students’ comics were analyzed holistically, noting how panels interacted with one another and the combination of all the panels on the page. Such process considered Groensteen’s “iconic solidarity,” as reading comics requires one to view the interdependence of images that “participating in a series, present the double characteristic of being separated … and which are plastically and semantically over-determined by the fact of their coexistence in praesentia” (2007, 18). The social and cultural phenomena were also considered—how socially and culturally situated images influence the compositions (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). Triangulating data included drawing ties between the focal students’ material, the model texts read in the comics course, and the students’ self-reported experiences.

110  Michael L. Kersulov

The comics course The comics course was taught at a three-week summer Academy, gathering gifted students from one Midwestern state within the United States. The course worked to challenge popular and historical perceptions of visual compositions, the use of images, and the use of memoir to write about identity. The students, who had just completed their sophomore year in high school, read, discussed, and investigated various comics genres, including superheroes, memoirs, comic essays, graphic journalism, webcomics, comics strips, and poetry comics. A primary goal was for students to compose comics to interrogate their own experiences and identities—to see a potential value of the comics medium to understand and make meaning of their world. Lynda Barry speaks to a similar objective while creating comics in the classroom in which students note “how images move between people and parts of ourselves—from the back of the mind of the page” (2014, 10). Beginning with lessons regarding the grammar of comics, students read and discussed McCloud’s Understanding Comics (1993). They then completed an original composition. The first asked students to create an avatar of themselves to use as a reference for future comics. They listed adjectives, nouns, and verbs they believed described aspects of their identities, hobbies, interests, and backgrounds. Using these lists, they drew self-portraits. The students then created three memoir comics. The first prompt stated, “create a comic that talks about one or more of the words you used to describe yourself in the avatar assignment. Think of a time in your life that makes you think the words you chose represent you.” After reading Spiegelman’s Maus, vol. 1 (1986), the second prompt asked: “Choose a theme we discussed in class about Maus. Write a comic about a time in your life that relates to one of the themes.” In the third week of the course, students composed a memoir comic about a time or incident in which they endured a struggle, obstacle, or stereotype. This chapter focuses on the third memoir comics.

Laura: Trying to forgive through the pain Laura’s comic opens with an image of a school building, narrating, “School has never been easy.” A scene inside a classroom unfolds, populated with depictions of sleeping students, their heads on desks as the teacher stands in front of the room (see Figure 7.1). Laura draws herself sitting in the front of class, awake, smiling, and with the word “Me” in block letters above her. With an arrow pointing down onto her, Laura becomes the focal point of the panel, but she also becomes the focal point of the classroom. The text, “The work itself was never difficult,” confirms her studiousness in the classroom setting, but it complicates her earlier comment that “School has never been easy.” The following three panels move away from the classroom into the heart of what “has never been easy” for Laura. She depicts three people in a series of panels, two standing together, labelled “popular girls,” and one figure, Laura,

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Figure 7.1  Laura’s comic, page 1.

112  Michael L. Kersulov standing off to the side. The blocked letters, “Me,” hovering above Laura in the classroom contrast with how she groups the “popular girls,” using brackets. Such labelling renders Laura as a singular individual in the classroom full of people, an outsider not included in the social group. Laura’s visual representation of what “has never been easy,” such as the labelling strategies, is supported by the text separated into three panels: “But the people … they were the real … issue.” In the following panel, the two girls, with smiles on their faces, yell at Laura, “Hey Nerd! Why don’t you go kill yourself? No one will miss you!!” Laura is depicted alone, tears falling down her face, standing over the final word in the text: “issue.” The word “issue” thus takes on an ambiguous meaning. Laura continues, “Everyday, I was told I was: Ugly, FAT, Pathetic, Loser, Dork, Geek, Nerd”. These seven words consume the entire panel, surrounding the panel as if within an echoing chamber (see Figure 7.2). The words stand heavy on the page, becoming objects representative of experiences of abuse and torment. Laura comments in the following panel that “The verbal abuse was soon tolerable. (At least I was able to pretend.)” The image of Laura looks at the reader with an emotionless expression. She holds a mask with a smile on it, as if she is holding it up for the reader. An arrow from the mask points to Laura’s face, symbolizing how she tolerated the verbal abuse and suggesting that she smiled through acts of bullying in an effort to cope with the situation. However, providing parenthesis for the second sentence, “(At least I was able to pretend),” conflicts with her comment that she was able to tolerate the “popular girls” comments. The Laura in the comic is not tolerating it. She is hiding. The situation with the “popular girls” then escalates into physical violence. Four smiling girls with arms in the air in celebration push an image of Laura onto the ground, kicking her. Laura’s coping strategy of hiding behind a mask, pretending to tolerate her bullies, fails her when attacked. Her attacked image lies under the arms and legs of her attackers. Her body is bent in half and lines protrude from her head, indicating force of the attack. The next panel shows the same four girls who attacked Laura standing outside a locker door that has just been shut, suggesting that they have placed Laura in there. The text reads: “I felt like I could never deal with the … PAIN.” The word “pain,” all in large, capital letters, is written under the four girls. Similar to how she positions the word “issue” under an image of herself on the previous page, Laura emphasizes the significance of “issue” and “pain.” The comic concludes (page not displayed) with Laura explaining how she attempts to empathize with her bullies, recognizing that they could be suffering as well. She narrates the last six panels: “So instead of being angry and wanting REVENGE … I instead felt sorry for them. Now ever[y] time someone lashes out … I have SYMPATHY.” In an interview, Laura commented that the comic was about her “finding forgiveness” for her bullies. She did not express that it was her intention to stop her bullies. It is through her own volition that she tackles the emotional distress of being verbally abused, pushed, and kicked. Laura’s comic becomes less about representations of her bullies or “popular girls” and more about the representation of herself as a gifted student—one that is tormented and targeted as painful.

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Figure 7.2  Laura’s comic, page 2.

Abby: Working hard but always the outsider Abby wrote a comic that addresses being a gifted student within a small rural town. On the day she wrote the comic, Abby entered the classroom, clearly upset, announcing loudly, “Just because I don’t live in [a large city] doesn’t mean I’m dumb!” This was a new side of Abby that I had not seen. She usually

114  Michael L. Kersulov was happy and eager to engage in conversation, displaying an outgoing sense of humour and infectious charisma. In her comic she presents stereotypes of both small-town life and giftedness, juxtaposing them in satiric fashion. Abby begins with two characters yelling. A man wears a cowboy hat, has lazy, sunken eyes, and a bucktooth smile. He yells, “BETTY,” in larger-than-life bold letters surrounded by a speech bubble similar to an explosion (see Figure 7.3). He then asks the woman next to him,

Figure 7.3  Abby’s comic.

Finding Voice within the Objects of Their Lives 115 “Where’s the remote?” A woman, depicted with wide eyes and a nervous grimace, holds a baby in her arms and yells back, “GIMMIE A MINUTE JIM BOB.” Beside both characters, a sign stuck in the grass reads: “Small town Pop: 24.” Abby’s view into small town life brings to the forefront the caricatures frequently found in entertainment shows such as Green Acres or The Beverly Hillbillies. The uncouth, uneducated, ruff ians of rural life are loud, self-serving, promote gender-based familial roles of oppression, and are isolated from the larger world. Abby draws herself foregrounding the scene, slightly outside the panel. She wears a smile, eyes closed, and her arms are turned up in a shrugging, questioning position. She is not fully part of the panel, separated from the rustic scene, but she is also not displayed as a full outsider. She is somewhere in between, claiming heritage in small town life, but with a critical inspection of it. Text is drawn in the gutter: “Why does everyone assume people from a small town are uneducated?” Abby plays with the stereotype of the uneducated hillbilly, while at the same time, as she introduces herself as a member of a small town, she challenges its characteristics. The outsider/insider narration continues throughout the comic as Abby’s self-depiction moves in and out of the panels. In the second panel, Abby remains on the outside of the frame. Behind her a building with two doors stands. Above each door a sign indicates the results from a fictional object, an “IQ-inator.” One door is labelled: “IQ: 90, Capacity: 10.” Abby stands in front of the second door, alluding to her giftedness. She narrates the panel: “Every town has intelligent people. My town just so happens to have less than most.” The position Abby places herself on the page, between the first two panels, is interesting. As the comic begins, Abby’s image stands on the far left of the page, becoming the first object the reader views. To the right of her the reader sees the argument between the man with the cowboy hat and the woman holding a baby. In the second panel with the IQ-inator, Abby’s image shifts to the far right. With both images of her outside the panel, but still part of them, her two bodies frame the two hyperbolic scenes of small-town intellect. She positions her physical body as an object that encapsulates both small town culture and perceptions of giftedness as strange and unusual. Abby continues by drawing herself with three other people in front of the town sign. Curly lines emanate from the sign as if it exudes some force or power. The three other figures standing with Abby look confused with swirling eyeballs and straight, unemotional mouths. The text reads, “But with hard work, you can allow the town to have no effect on you.” Abby, her back turned from the sign and the dazed townspeople, smiles and with closed eyes, says, “No way!” It is curious how Abby portrays the town visually as uneducated, and its people as almost controlled by some force that stupefies them. However, at the same time, her presence as a member of the town does not affect her, and her text challenges the notion of a small-town stereotype. It would seem that the visual representations of small-town life are ironic

116  Michael L. Kersulov and Abby is there to set the record straight. Although, she complicates such a reading as she writes, “But with hard work, you can allow the town to have no effect on you.” Is she recognizing a link between rural life and lack of intelligence? Or is she commenting again on the perception of educated individuals in the community? The following panel has text around the frame: “A location has no factor in your academics no matter what people may assume.” Abby migrates back to challenging the small-town stereotype, one that even challenges the objects she drew in the previous panel in which the sign seems to control the townspeople. Inside the panel, three girls question, “But you’re from Smalltown? How’d you get to something like [the Academy?]” The three girls have their eyes closed, look similar, and ask the question in unison. They bring up images of catty, “mean girls” teasing peers for social status. In this panel, Abby is not present. Rather, a voice from off the panel answers the “mean girls’” question of how Abby, who is from a small town and thus assumed to be not gifted, could meet the competitive requirements to be invited to the Academy. Abby’s answer: “Hard Work!” Abby’s argument begins to take on new shape here. She still pokes holes in the small town, uneducated stereotype, but the argument shifts towards how her gifted peers at the Academy view her. It is no longer about Betty or Jim Bob. Nor is it about the IQ of the population or the notion that the town and the environment might have some uncanny ability to render its inhabitants unintelligent. Instead, Abby turns her attention to the snobbery and expectations regarding giftedness. The girls that enquire about Abby’s background are presumably students of the Academy attempting to root out outsiders in their community. In an interview, Abby commented how she thought it was difficult being a gifted student in a small town because her classmates at her district school bullied her for “wanting to be better than what she was.” That is, she should be happy to live in the community, not wanting to leave, and not “showing off” her academic talents. This was a frequent comment from students at the Academy, especially for those who revealed that they had never before left their hometown. In some respect, the Academy was their first introduction to a larger world, and they typically commented on how they felt accepted and welcomed despite their intellect— sometimes for the first time in their life. However, Abby spins those experiences around, showing how the students at the Academy question her presence not only at the Academy but within the membership of “giftedness.” In this sense, Abby is caught between two communities without full acceptance in either. Abby’s comic ends with advice for other gifted students who might have similar experiences. The final panel depicts a newspaper from Abby’s hometown. The frontpage pictures Abby with the headline, “Former Native Earns Doctorate. Dr. [Abby].” The text reads, “Stay determined and don’t let a stereotype affect you!” It is not that Abby seems pushed away from her town because it is small or what she perceives as uneducated. It becomes clearer that Abby not only values higher education, but she also aspires to achieve an

Finding Voice within the Objects of Their Lives 117 academic career. Such goals could not be fulfilled if she stayed in her hometown. This is not a comment of disparity about her town, but rather she becomes a celebrated member of her community, welcomed in such a fashion that she is presented on the front page of the town’s newspaper. Her final line, “stay determined,” can be read as advice for experiences both at home and at the Academy. Abby highlights how she feels attacked from multiple fronts when it comes to giftedness, that she recognizes the complex social and cultural elements couched within the label. Regardless of her experiences and frustrations, her comic is a message of hope.

Derick: “Just because I am loud, talk a lot, and black, I am not dumb” Derick, an African American student, wrote about his experiences with intersections of race and giftedness. The title of his comic, “Test Scores Matter,” opens the comic, each word written next to a circled letter A, B and C, depicting an object of a multiple-choice test. The title seems to foreshadow the importance of achieving high marks on academic tests, but as the narrative unfolds, Derick relates how social elements and peer relationships complicate his experiences with giftedness, specifically when they intersect with racially charged stereotypes. The narrative begins with a group of people surrounding Derick. Each individual in the panel is labelled as “Friend” (see Figure 7.4). Derick’s image,

Figure 7.4  Derick’s comic.

118  Michael L. Kersulov labelled “Me,” is centred. The panel is narrated: “In band, I’ve always been a fun-loving, loud black kid.” The word “black” in the sentence hangs below the sentence line, inserted with an arrow as a correctional notation. Derick’s inclusion of the word “black” in the sentence may have been an afterthought, but it brings into question why he decided to add it and whether he intentionally positioned the word in such a manner. In either case, the physical position of the additional adjective heightens the emphasis of the word in the sentence. While the image of Derick does not look any different from his peers, the inclusion of the word “black” gestures towards how his race lies within the overarching topic of the comic. In the next three panels, Derick shifts the focus to experiences related to giftedness. One panel depicts two thought bubbles containing mathematical formulas and graphs, writing, “No one knew how smart I really was.” Derick depicts his intelligence as just as invisible as the thought bubbles, unknown to others around him. He does not indicate whether he deliberately hid his intelligence from his peers, family, or teachers or if it was not recognized by others—that there was something unnamed about him that would render him ineligible for the gifted community. In the following panel, Derick provides a visible, more tangible representation of his intelligence as he draws a document that shows an ACT (a national standardized test) score of 27/36 that Derick obtained when he was in 8th grade. Here Derick demonstrates his intelligence with two objects. It is as if it is not enough for him to say that he is smart or that he often thinks about academic material, but he uses a quantifiable measurement that is nationally recognized as a pseudo intelligence test. The panel with the ACT score is narrated, “One day, I told my friends the truth.” His peers’ reactions are conveyed as a group rallies towards him. The text reads, “Now they all look at me differently.” Instead of surrounding him, as they are at the beginning of the comic, Derick’s friends line up to meet with him. Derick, at the head of the line, is holding papers and books, items of academic work. His approaching friends, now “look[ing] at [him] differently,” announce, “He’s a genius!” One figure with a document in hand approaches Derick, asking, “Can you help me out with this?” This depiction, the revelation from his peers that Derick is now gifted, positions Derick as someone who can produce schoolwork. His peers lining up with papers in hand approach Derick in the hope that he will either assist them or complete their work for them. In either case, Derick now becomes a tool. He does not depict them celebrating his accomplishments. Rather, they commodify him. The last six panels of Derick’s comic relate to his emotional state after revealing to his peers his giftedness and their reaction. He draws multiple panels of smiling faces and a hand giving a thumbs-up, narrating, “And I am happy! And Smart!” These are followed by three panels with different objects: a pencil, eraser, and a graded paper receiving an A+. His verbal narration disappears. Instead, he provides objects to represent feelings of happiness and academic success. He does not provide any follow up with his peers, or whether or not he helped others with their schoolwork, or more specifics on how his friends looked

Finding Voice within the Objects of Their Lives 119 at or treated him differently now that they knew of his gifted status. In an interview, I asked Derick what the point of his comic was, and he answered that it was about “People not knowing that I’m smart.” He then related that in his comic, “Racism is the subject I’m addressing. I want the reader to understand that just because I am loud, talk a lot, and black, I am not dumb. I dislike judging books by covers.” Derick’s comic provides his experiences of being a black gifted student, feeling invisible from dominant culture until he chooses to reveal his talents and demonstrates them in a quantifiable, mainstream fashion—an ACT test score. His relationship with his peers shifts after they learn of his gifted status. While Derick depicts himself surrounded by friends before they learn of his academic talents, suggesting that he experienced multiple friendships, afterwards Derick is depicted away from others—now a source and utility to help with or even complete their work for them. These images of one black, gifted young male are further complicated by Derick’s comment about being loud and talking a lot. Derick juxtaposes competing representations of what it is to be black. Derick brings to the comic representations of being black that translate into being loud, talking a lot, and being unintelligent. While at the same time, Derick reveals in the comic a counterstory of his experiences of being black and gifted—of being smart, but no one noticing, of being treated as an oddity when his peers learn of his giftedness, of being judged—like a book cover—by his outwards appearance.

Discussion: Objects of crisis Within the three focal students’ memoir comics, they presented objects of crisis to communicate experiences. These objects fall into three categories: objects of achievement, objects of alienation, and objects of pain. The objects of achievement are the collection of tests, A+ papers, ACT scores, formulas, and charts, and the IQ-inator. These objects speak to the pressure gifted students have to achieve, to produce material not necessarily to satisfy their personal goals but the goals of others. These are objects that typically define giftedness: scores, tests, and assessments. In the students’ work, we see how these objects lead to separating them from their peers and their community, leading to feelings of alienation. Objects of alienation in the students’ memoir comics include Laura surrounded by sleeping students with a large arrow pointing down on her, Abby’s IQ-inator, and Abby’s depiction of the town sign. The sleeping students become less of a comment on the other students and more of a comment on Laura’s feelings of loneliness. She is not only ousted by her peers, but even the teacher in the classroom focuses only on Laura, separating her from her peers. Similarly, Abby’s IQ-inator fractures the social dynamic, separating Abby from her classmates and fellow community members. Abby’s town sign, an object that serves to welcome newcomers, does everything but for Abby. Whether she depicts the sign having some ability to hypnotize its residents against Abby or not, the

120  Michael L. Kersulov sign does not welcome Abby into her community, instead serving as a painful reminder that she is different, an outsider. It could be argued that almost any of the objects presented in the students’ work could be considered objects of pain or those that present painful experiences. Even the comics themselves, the physical paper they drew on, are ripe for such analysis. However, the depictions of tears, a mask, and the manipulation of text size and font are prevalent as objects of pain. Laura’s depiction of herself crying before her peers as they attempt to coax her into taking her life and then beat her, points to the narratives of pain, leading her to draw a metaphysical mask to hide from her bullies and possibly her life. All three of the students manipulated text size and font in poignant areas of their work. Abby does so with the IQ-inator, Derick emphasizes achieved grades and scores, and Laura brings focus to the names she was called. The altered text brings a weight to the words, an objectness that brings meaning and acknowledgement of pain in the students’ narratives.

Concluding thoughts When I first started teaching at the Academy, I was not prepared to consider and hear how the students’ coming of age stories would be entrenched with alienation, pain, and identity confusion related to being gifted and talented. Gilmore notes a commonality among coming-of-age narratives, such as the students’ comics memoirs: “coming of age entails learning to tell a story in which the self is at once a mobile and partially aware witness of the events in [one’s] own and others’ lives” (2011, 159). Laura, Abby and Derick enact such witnessing in their work as they present not a single story of giftedness, not a single story of pain, but a collage of experiences that depict a gifted student’s life in crisis. Furthermore, the students’ comics speak to the intersectionality of giftedness, gender, class, and race. Feelings of alienation can become compounded when various layers of identity overlap with giftedness, including those associated with female students, lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and students of colour (Kerr and Foley-Nicpon 2002). It is possible that Laura, Abby, and Derick’s gender, class, and race reinforced the alienation they suffered due to their gifted and talented label. Thus, the work discussed in this chapter foregrounds the potential threats, in and out of the classroom, that can accompany giftedness if students are not supported—the potential of crises in young lives. Using memoir comics as a mode of writing and incorporating the use of objects that carry the weight of experiences, memories, and identity, the students shared their worlds with their readers—worlds they expressed were at times too difficult to say aloud. In doing so, they employed a variant of Tabachnick’s autobiographical comic subgenre, “one in which the autobiographer discovers what [he or she] believes in and who [he or she] really is over the course of the autobiography itself” (2011, 115). Considering the students’ texts and reflections, I argue that it was the unique combination of

Finding Voice within the Objects of Their Lives 121 autobiography and the comics medium that led to the students’ discovery and presentation of self: a gifted student in pain searching for a voice. As a result, more work must be done so that educators and the adults in the lives of gifted students can be prepared and proactive, recognizing that even though gifted students have talents, seem mature, and might have the ingredients for a successful future, many, like Laura, Abby and Derick, are searching for a voice to express a life of crisis.

References Barry, Lynda. 2014. Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly. Boland, Catherine M. and Miraca Gross. 2007. “Counseling Highly Gifted Children and Adolescents.” In Models of Counseling Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults, edited by S. Mendaglio and J. S. Peterson, 153–197. Waco: Prufrock. Chan, David W. 2003. “Assessing Adjustment Problems of Gifted Students in Hong Kong: The Development of the Student Adjustment Problems Inventory.” Gifted Child Quarterly 47, no. 2: 107–117. Chute, Hillary L. 2017. Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere. New York: Harper. Creswell, John W., and J. David Creswell. 2017. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. London: Sage. El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2012. Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Gilmore, Leigh. 2011. “Witnessing Persepolis: Comics, Trauma, and Childhood Testimony.” In Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels, edited by Michael A. Chaney, 157–63. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Groensteen, Thierry. 2007. The System of Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ––––––. 2013. Comics and Narration. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Gross, Miraca. 2004. Exceptionally Gifted Children. London: Routledge. Hatfield, Charles. 2005. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Kerr, Bethany A., Nicholas Colangelo, and Julie Gaeth. 1988. “Gifted Adolescents’ Attitudes toward Their Giftedness.” Gifted Child Quarterly 32, no. 2: 245–247. Kerr, Bethany A., and Megan Foley-Nicpon. 2002. “Gender and Giftedness.” In Handbook of Gifted Education, edited by Nicolas Colangelo and Gary A. Davis, 493–505. New York: Allyn & Bacon. Kersulov, Michael L. 2016. “Emotional Truth with Fictional Images: Reading and Writing Nonfiction Comics in the Secondary Classroom.” English Journal 105, no. 4: 69–75. Kress, Gunther R., and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Psychology Press. Lincoln, Yvonna S., and Egon Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry (Vol. 75). London: Sage. McCloud, S. 1993. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: William Morrow. Merriam, Sharan B., and Elizabeth J. Tisdell. 2015. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. National Association for Gifted Children. n.d. “Glossary of Terms.” https://www.nagc. org/resources-publications/resources/glossary-terms.

122  Michael L. Kersulov Pahl, Kate, and Jennifer Rowsell. 2019. Artifactual Literacies: Every Object Tells a Story. New York: Teachers College Press. Peterson, Jean, Nancy Duncan, and Kate Canady. 2009. “A Longitudinal Study of Negative Life Events, Stress, and School Experiences of Gifted Youth.” Gifted Child Quarterly 53, no. 1: 34–49. Spiegelman, Art. 1992. Maus I: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon Books. Tabachnick, Stephen, E. 2011. “Autobiography as Discovery in Epileptic.” In Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels, edited by Michael A. Chaney, 101–116. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. The New London Group. 1996. “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Harvard Educational Review 66, no. 1: 60–93.

Part III

Superheroic Precarity

8

Super-Precariat Socioeconomic Fictions and Realities of Superhero Comic Books Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado

Heaven and earth One of the most favourable reactions among the audience when the first season of Falcon and the Winter Soldier premiered in March 2021—a TV show starring superheroes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe—referred to its reflection of the economic difficulties faced by the character played by African American actor Anthony Mackie. Both critics and fans agreed to praise how the triumphant superhero side of the Falcon, played by Mackie, was juxtaposed with the economic problems suffered by his family, problems that his sister, Sarah (Adepero Oduye), had been forced to solve for years without his help. At the end of the season, the Falcon came down from the clouds and pledged his support to the delicate circumstances Sarah and her community faced as African Americans belonging to an underprivileged social status. The first episode of another superhero TV show premiered in 2021, Superman & Lois—part of the Arrowverse orchestrated by DC Comics and The CW—also highlighted the financial obstacles faced by its protagonists, specifically in obtaining a bank loan. The coincidence of the same arguments in both productions prompted the television critic Chancellor Agard to point out that “we need one more instance of this to call it a trend, but it’s still interesting to see two superhero shows that deal with classic American iconography engage with real world economic issues (…) In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson is a guy who can help save the world, but he struggles with mundane problems like keeping the family business afloat” (Agard 2021). In a similar vein, film and TV critic Meghan O’Keefe concluded that “The Falcon is famous. The Falcon has rich friends. The Falcon can’t qualify for a small business loan (…) this is a TV show about the everyday barriers Black men and women experience because of systemic racism. Financial institutions are less likely to give Black clients the same loans white people get (…) This scene might be the first moment in the MCU where fans are confronted with the day-to-day reality of being Black in America. Racism isn’t just police brutality or hateful slurs; it’s also a complex system of barriers designed to hold Black people back from advancement” (O’Keefe 2021). DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-12

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Dissonances and instability Falcon and the Winter Soldier has been, at least during its first season, a TV show attentive to the new sensitivities towards the problems of class, race, and gender that characterize our present. But its production within one of the most powerful media and entertainment conglomerates in the industry, Disney, gives rise to question about the legitimacy of this type of fiction, the long-term scope of its discourses, and the authenticity of its role in the consumption of its images by the public, especially among its youngest viewers. In the words of Ashley S. Richardson, “the ultimate issue with Marvel Cinematic Universe fans is not their willingness to encourage studio productions at all costs, but their unwillingness to do it critically” (Richardson 2017). In any case, perhaps because the superhero comic books had never achieved the diverse and global popularity that film and television adaptations currently enjoy, critics and audiences tend to believe that socioeconomic issues are new in the genre; however comic books have treated these issues for decades, with the subsequent tensions regarding the credibility of their postulates and their correlation with the dynamics of our world. In this sense, for the purposes of this essay, we will understand precariat—within fiction or in the fields of comic book production and reception—as that condition that prevents, in terms established by Guy Standing, “a full citizen access to five types of rights: civil, political, cultural, social and economic (…) faced with the classical proletariat, exploited in a stable full-time occupation, contemporary capitalism has contributed to the figure of the precariat, marked by job instability, lack of professional narrative, and pressure on their times and vital spaces, which leads to a reduction of their citizenship rights” (Standing 2014, 5–6). In the so-called Golden Age of the superhero comic books, which includes the pioneering development of the format between 1938 and 1953—period during which certain numbers of titles such as Superman or Wonder Woman reached sales of one and a half million copies (Lavin 1998)—average comic writers did not worry about the daily lives of their characters. This aspect was only considered a narrative binder of the bigger than life adventures of the superhero or a comical and sentimental pause between them. With remarkable exceptions, such as Wonder Woman and her revolutionary feminist agenda (McCausland 2017), or more anecdotic—such as the working single mother Ma Hunkel, an All American Publications character who occasionally acted as a superhero in her neighbourhood between 1939 and 1944— the figure of the superhero exalted the yearnings for a fuller life amid a society still suffering the economic ravages of the Great Depression, the anxieties about new technologies that demanded changes of perspective, and the patriotic spirit required in readers with the outbreak of World War II.

Agreements and disagreements Except for such unique characters as Fawcett Comics’ primitive Captain Marvel— whose alter ego is a 12-year-old boy, Billy Batson—the vast majority of superheroes published in the Golden Age of comic books were adults. Sometimes, they

Super-Precariat 127 were helped by adolescent sidekicks, who had no autonomy or independence. We must wait for several years after World War II—when socioeconomic development and baby boom in the United States led to the “teenager triumphant (…) a new youth world, part of the mainstream of American life (…) with ‘a philosophy of life’ and purchasing power” (Savage 2018, 545–546)—to find superheroes interested in accurately representing to a certain degree the concerns of most of their young readers. These are favourable circumstances for the emergence of the Silver Age of comic books, a period—from 1956 to 1970—precisely marked by the social upheavals linked to this new youthful awareness. Although DC Comics is the publisher that kicked off the Silver Age with its revivals of superheroes like Flash and Green Lantern, its characters were still schematic. It was the rival publisher of DC, Marvel Comics, which better gauged the pulse of this new teenage sensibility. Under the creative command of Stan Lee, superheroes like The Hulk, Thor, The Thing or Daredevil not only displayed a defined identity as mere citizens, but that identity also lent a sense to their powers beyond the extraordinary; it mirrored their aspirations, their limitations, their disagreements, and their frustrations with everything that surrounded them in their daily lives (Howe 2012). The most paradigmatic case is, of course, the adolescent Peter Parker, a brilliant but shy science student who is given arachnid powers because of the bite of a spider accidentally subjected to nuclear irradiation. Peter will use that power for the greater good in the guise of Spider-Man. Created in 1962, Spider-Man is still the most popular superhero in the world 60 years later (Jennings 2021), so his worries when he leaves the mask aside, linked with his overwhelmingly frequent employment issues and financial struggles, seem of special interest. Peter is an orphan, raised in the diverse and populous New York borough of Queens by his uncle Ben and his aunt May until the former is murdered by a thief. Peter will be haunted for years by the financial straits of his household.

Power and submission Following the superhero’s successful debut in Amazing Fantasy #15, Marvel granted Spider-Man its own series. From the first issue of The Amazing SpiderMan, published in March 1963, financial troubles make their appearance with an unusual realism: Aunt May begs the landlord for delaying rent payments and pawns some jewels for liquidity, so Peter considers devoting his superpowers to making easy money, resorting to criminality. However, the possibility of ending up in jail and breaking his aunt’s heart, added to the lesson derived from his uncle’s death—in which he played a sinisterly paradoxical role—makes Peter a paralyzed victim of the famous adage “with great power comes great responsibility” (Lee and Ditko 1962, Vol. 1 #15, 11). Psychologically incapacitated to use his newly acquired skills in committing crimes, Peter will try to exploit them in live shows. But he will run into an unpleasant surprise: as he must preserve his identity under the mask of the superhero, no bank is willing to manage the checks he has received for his performances (Lee and 1963a, Vol. 1 #1, 4).

128  Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado Peter looks for work, but his efforts come to nothing, because he is too young and overly qualified. Desperate, he infiltrates the Baxter Building, owned by the first group of superheroes published by Marvel, The Fantastic Four, in order to offer his powers almost as a mercenary, to which his interlocutors rudely dismiss: “Afraid you made a mistake, Spider-Man! The Fantastic Four are a non-profit organization! We pay no salaries or bonuses! Any profit we make goes into scientific research! You came to the wrong place, pal! This isn’t General Motors!” (Lee and Ditko 1963a, Vol. 1 #1, 18). The solution to Peter’s financial troubles lies once again in a paradox that affects the attributes of the character: J. Jonah Jameson, editor-in-chief of one of the city’s main newspapers, the fictional Daily Bugle, launches a media campaign against Spider-Man, whom he considers a public threat. To illustrate his arguments, he needs quality photographs that reflect the outlaw escapades of the urban vigilante. The best positioned for this turns out to be Peter himself, because, thanks to his ability to climb walls, he can place automatic cameras in privileged locations throughout the city (Lee and Ditko 1963b, Vol. 1 #2, 8). Because of that, during a long period of The Amazing Spider-Man, Peter works as a freelance photographer for a boss with an abusive and capricious disposition who, furthermore, hates the values honoured by his employee as a superhero. The massive degree of reader identification with Spider-Man will prompt its creators to persist in certain dramatic constants; among them, the toxic relationship between Parker and Jameson: in issue 624, Jameson, who has become the mayor of New York, not only dismisses Peter—his cabinet photographer since he took office—he also humiliates him at a press conference and advises the audience not to hire him (Waid, Peyer, Azaceta, and Rodríguez 2011, Vol. 1 #624, 19). The tensions with his patrons will be repeated in later stages of The Amazing Spider-Man and other series starring the web crawler, regardless of whether Peter’s work shifts to teaching or research. Only in recent years has the character managed to emancipate himself at work. The comic book writers even imagined for a while that he led an industrial conglomerate called Parker Industries (Slott, Gage, Ramos, and Olazaba 2014, Vol. 1 #22). Although, with that, Peter emulated the capitalist dynamics of power and submission that he suffered until then as a subordinate.

Artists and models When writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko first described Peter Parker as a working-class young man who lived with his aunt in Queens, they did not think of that as a privilege. During the 1950s, New York had been figuratively and literally considered the capital of the world for arts, business and (counter) culture. In the following decade, the city entered a prolonged phase of decline due to complex socioeconomic and urban factors (Bayor 1982). Spider-Man’s relentless struggles against small-time crooks and supervillains, and Peter’s efforts to make a living, were more plausible than we could think. And not just for the reader informed about the realities of New York, or the teenager who could feel more identified with Peter Parker and his working-class enemies—Rhino, Sandman, Electro, and other B-List Villains (McNulty 2017)—than

Super-Precariat 129 with those other Marvel superheroes who had no problem inhabiting luxurious mansions and fighting evil full-time, such as The Fantastic Four or The Avengers. Indeed, the same artists working for publishers like Marvel and DC were well aware of how difficult it was to survive writing or drawing. This was more common in large cities and suburbs, which were expensive, but where artists needed to live, particularly in those times when they could not use technologies such as the Internet to work remotely (Newbold 2018). Until the 1990s, when they managed to elevate their work to a cultural capital capable of improving their working conditions, artists were victims of precarity and lack of incentives similar to the circumstances suffered by Peter Parker. Their employment status was that of work-for-hire, so they were vulnerable to the whims of the editors and the volatile tastes of the readers. In addition, they did not hold the intellectual property rights to their characters, who were, for all intents and purposes, corporate or industrial creations (Kidman 2019, 135), which made any economic return via royalties impossible. The uncertainty and alienation that this way of writing or drawing entailed has been defined by Scott McCloud as “the secret labor of the language of comics (…) readers assume that to begin to draw a page is to take up your pencil and start to sketch. And of course it’s not, because there’s a great deal of work that goes on before that pencil is even touched” (Chute 2014, 29). Comic book writers also had an aspect of hidden identity in this regard, and they could not explicitly reveal it to their employer or their readers if they did not want to be punished for it. They had to pour their feelings into the superhero or supervillain they were working on, or even into mercenaries. It is the case of another Marvel character, Luke Cage, the first African American superhero with his own comic book. Luke is the mercenary that Peter could not be for The Fantastic Four.

Race and rage Significantly, when Luke Cage, later known as Power Man, debuts in the Marvel Universe in June 1972, the subtitle of his series is precisely Hero for Hire. Although he is not as young as Peter Parker—who was 16 when his adventures began in 1962—Luke is not a mature man either. His hardened appearance, his sculptural body and his sceptical disposition have to do with his bad experiences on the streets of Harlem and in prison, where he was subjected to experiments causing his invulnerability and extraordinary physique. Luke does not have much hope when it comes to human capacity for kindness, so he charges for his superhero services as an urban vigilante (Goodwin, Tuska and Graham 1972a, Vol. 1 #1, 22). The character of Power Man is linked with the rise of blaxploitation or action cinema produced by and for African Americans, and with the decline of the Silver Age of comic books and the entry of the medium into the Bronze Age (1973–1985). Following the schematism of the superheroes of the Golden Age, the Silver Age had provided characters with psychological complexity and a certain social conscience, always within the framework of an idealism typical of the 1960s (Schoell 2019). The Bronze Age delves into the achievements of the

130  Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado previous era, but with an evident reflective disenchantment, in parallel to a sociopolitical scene in which the countercultural midsummer night’s dream of the 1960s had derived into the Watergate scandal and other cases of systemic corruption; a serious global economic crisis that devastated the industrial fabric and its corresponding working class; a degradation of the downtown of large cities such as New York, Chicago and Detroit; and a growing awareness of the fragility of the natural environment, and of the effects of overpopulation, all of which stained the horizon with apocalyptic forecasts. This is the breeding ground for Power Man but also Wolverine, the Punisher, Conan the Barbarian, Phoenix, the Ghost Rider, or the bizarre Howard the Duck, whose comics were subtitled “trapped in a world he never made,” a feeling all these superheroes share (Misiroglu 2012). We are talking about superheroes whose actions are motivated by money, revenge, dissatisfaction, and anger almost in its purest form; debatable superheroes for a debatable, uncomfortable world, whose proclamations about a certain value system collided with the daily lives full of injustices for the individual and their community. At the same time, the creative precariat of comic books had to identify with these issues in times of a rising publishing industry and its first lucrative synergies with the film and television sector. On the other hand, comic book readers, who, for the first time, had extended their youthful hobby into adulthood (Benton 1989, 48), were forced to contrast the ideals present in their favourite titles with their own reality. In the third issue of his comic, dated October 1972, Luke Cage translates that tension into the aspect that defines him as a superhero, the monetary one, during a tense conversation with Dr Noah Burstein, the scientist who gave him his superpowers and who is determined to stop him from being a mercenary selling his services to the highest bidder: “But you wish I was unselfishly aidin’ mankind like you wanted to? Savin’ the universe gratis like the Fantastic Four or the Avengers or some other local super-studs? I lost enough of nothin’ already in this life, man. Girl I loved, lotta good years … No more, baby!” (Goodwin, Tuska, and Graham 1972b, Vol. 1 #3, 5). Over time, Luke will participate in the prevalent moral logic of comic books, but in moments of crisis he will always bring out his deep conviction that the nobility of the ideals advocated by superheroes is directly related to his lack of contact with the realities of class and race, which have made a mercenary out of him.

Feminism and sorority One of the most positive convulsions that take place in the transitional period between the Silver Age and the Bronze Age of comic books is the impact of women’s lib on the stories (Wright 2001, 250). Broadly speaking, Marvel seemingly fails in its attempts to exploit second-wave feminism, arriving late in its exploration of the movement. This is evident in the failure of new comics published with this purpose such as The Cat (1972–1973), Night Nurse (1972–1973), Shanna the SheDevil (1972–1973) and Ms. Marvel (1977–1979). Only Ms. Marvel has a significant, albeit irregular, journey in the editorial history of Marvel Comics publishing. Carol Danvers enjoys a striking professional profile when she is not working as a

Super-Precariat 131 superheroine, and, with it, she exemplifies the progressive drift of the women’s lib in post-feminism or third-wave feminism: Carol embodies white women aspirations to develop a professional career in a man’s world (Cocca 2021, chapter 20). Danvers successively works as a security manager in a military facility, an editor of an openly feminist magazine (Woman Magazine), and, decades later, as a fighter pilot. She does not suffer financial hardship in any case, as opposed to one of her best friends, Jessica Jones, a secondary superhero from the Marvel Universe created for the ongoing series Alias (2001–2003) by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos. In Alias, Jessica is a private detective specializing in superhero cases. Her activities provide her with just enough to survive, in the company of other adult characters from the Marvel Universe belonging to the humblest strata of life in a big city: Daredevil, Marko the Mountain Man, and, of course, Luke Cage, Jessica’s boyfriend and superheroic partner (Bendis and Coipel 2006, Annual 1 #1). The policy of Marvel’s editorial rival, DC Comics, regarding the overlap of feminism in its fictions was more successful (Hanley 2017). Its managers had relied for decades on comics featuring female characters, which had attracted the attention of many receptive female readers and allowed an organic advance towards vindicatory discourses prevalent between the 1960s and the 1970s. Wonder Woman, published by DC since 1941, is the most refined sample: between 1968 and 1973 she undertook a personal journey marked by the absence of superpowers and her dedication to espionage, martial arts, and a flower shop business. This vision by writer Denny O’Neil sought to revitalize Wonder Woman sales by appealing to contemporary popular culture icons, such as Emma Peel and Modesty Blaise, and the groovy sensibilities prevailing at the time, but it sparked controversy (Kohl 2014, 91). O’Neil’s writing demonstrated in any case that, after thirty years of existence, Wonder Woman had not been caught up in the economic dynamics of the comic industry and could offer a refreshing perspective of the times. The readers’ letters published in the pages of Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane (Williams 1994, 46) during a critical phase for the incorporation of women into the American labour market (1958–1974), indicate that the progressive mutations in this long-lived comic—137 issues—were well received. This might be understandable due to the fact that nobody had ever expected too much of this title, centred on the journalist and eternal girlfriend of the Man of Steel in the DC superhero universe, Lois Lane. This comic book was born in 1958 with a double intention: reinforcing the image of domesticity that was demanded of fiction in the 1950s and engaging female readers, less interested in superheroes than in comics about romances and broken hearts. In the pages of Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane, which became the third best-selling comic in the United States in 1962 (Miller, n.d.), Lois becomes obsessed with weakening Superman’s emotional shell, always trying to figure out his secret identity with the ultimate goal of marrying him. Paradoxically, Lois’ stubbornness sometimes leads her to compete with the superhero in her role as a research journalist or when she gains sporadic superpowers. As the series unfolds, Lois is presented as a less neurotic character, more attentive to herself and her concerns as a woman in a changing environment. Her agenda will never be feminist, but she will certainly experience epiphanies that

132  Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado will make her perceive herself as “a strong, smart, independent women, one who does not completely conform to the standard notions of femininity depicted in the popular culture of the time (…), Lois Lane was a spunky and intelligent ‘girl-reporter’ who demonstrated that women could have a career that they love and be successful at it” (Bowman Cvetkovic 2013, 42–56). The evolution of Lois is especially remarkable in issue 80 of Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane, in which she considers breaking her toxic relationship with the superhero for the first time. In issues 121 and 122, dated in April and May 1972, two years before the comic was cancelled, her occupational status is also of importance: the plot revolves around how Lois, shocked by the death of her sister, Lucy, leaves the Daily Planet, the newspaper where she had always worked, to become a freelancer and, as a consequence, faces job insecurity. “From now on, I work free lance! No one tells me what to write about. I pick my own stories,” Lois explains to the editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet, Perry White: “I’m a journalist. Everything I write reaches millions of people! I have a responsibility to that people! There’s far too much injustice all around us to be ignored any longer!” Her breakup with Superman follows the same pattern: “I can’t live at your shadow (…), The world needs Superman more than I do! I still love you but I have my own life to live!” The immediate result of her becoming a freelancer is that Lois must leave her fancier living quarters and stay in an apartment shared with three other working girls. The four young women exclaim, “All for one and one for all!” (Bates, Roth, and Colletta 1972, Vol. 15 #121, 24) in celebration of their new life. It is a moment of class and gender sisterhood that would take years to be standard practice in comic books.

Fame and consumerism In the second half of the 1980s, the Bronze Age of comic books blurs its boundaries with the contemporary age of the medium, characterized by a growing hybridization between the independent and the mainstream, the service to the fandom, the appeal to the neophyte, the growing power of female readers in editorial decisions, and the departure of comics from newsstands to inhabit specialized stores, often located in shopping malls (Hall 2019, 35). One of the superheroic representations of these paradigms is Jubilee, a pivotal character from the Marvel mutant universe, an editorial frenzy in the 1990s. Created by Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri in number 244 of The Uncanny X-Men comic—dated May 1989—Jubilee is the daughter of millionaire immigrants of Chinese descent, living in Beverly Hills. Her dream is to become a gymnast and participate in the Olympics. But, when her parents are murdered, she is sent to an orphanage. Jubilee’s fate takes on Dickensian overtones: after escaping the orphanage, she hides in a shopping mall, where she survives by stealing food and using public toilets. There, she discovers her mutant abilities, consisting of the generation of “pyrotechnic energy blasts” (Vélez 2017, 237). With these powers, she entertains local customers in exchange for a few coins. Jubilee will return to a life of privilege thanks to Wolverine, who sponsors her entry into the X-Men. This

Super-Precariat 133 does not prevent her from failing again in another creative endeavour, that of becoming an actress, but she only receives offers for stereotypical Asian roles. Jubilee embodies the expectations of 1990s teenagers forced to understand their identities in a historical context defined by the fall of the Berlin Wall, an unprecedented economic boom in the West, and the normalization of the media and celebrity system. The fact that Jubilee is almost reduced to begging for a while does not imply any deep reflection on this kind of situations, endemic in the state of California. What is relevant for Claremont, Silvestri and later artists in charge of the character is her generational attribution and the bonding of her yearnings and powers with the settings of fame and consumerism: being a gymnast, being an actress, being a superhero, and being a mallrat in the same ironic and ultimately innocuous sense that the movie Mallrats (Smith 1995). The synergies between fiction and reality are significant: between 1992 and 1997 an animated TV show, X-Men, was broadcast and turned Jubilee into a big star for younger viewers (Sacks 2018, 81).

Sexism and gentrification Jubilee took her first steps in Marvel Comics in the shadow of Wolverine. The young woman was the veteran mutant’s sidekick. The figure of the sidekick becomes problematic in the 21st-century comic books. The female characters gradually manage to emancipate themselves from their paternalistic tutors. In characters like X-23 or Cassandra Cain, this emancipation translates into a wild maladjustment to the system. On the other hand, Barbara Gordon/Batgirl—rewritten between 2014 and 2016 from the classic DC Comics character by Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher, and Babs Tarr—fits smoothly in the socioeconomic turmoil caused at the turn of the millennium by the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001, the 9/11 attacks, and the Great Recession started in 2008. The bulk of the characters from Marvel, DC and other superheroes editors are trapped during that hard period in macro-conflicts within fiction and in crises within publishers: continuous reboots and an eruption of film and television productions that altered the ideas around the brand value of superheroes (Perren and Steirer 2021, 109–129). However, Batgirl knew how to take advantage of all these events as a character and as a product: she stopped defining herself as a variant of Batman, moved to the coolest neighbourhood in Gotham, adopted new academic and social interests, and lived thanks to a university scholarship in a shared flat (Stewart, Fletcher and Tarr 2014a, Vol. 4 #35). This mutation of the character is fully in tune with the ethical, decorative, and urban gentrification experienced in the public sphere in recent years by many potential comic book female readers, especially those women who aspire to participate in the innovative and creative classes of today and tomorrow (Lindner and Sandoval 2021). Barbara balances her vigilante and everyday life capitalizing on her relationships and her self-exploitation, within the framework of an urban setting of exchange and speculation among peers. The conclusion of this Batgirl stage is positive: Barbara triumphs as a superheroine and a businesswoman, although at the cost of her personal relationships and her studies. Once dramatic economic circumstances have been

134  Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado overcome, another superheroine and friend of Barbara, Black Canary, will be able to record an album as the leader of a music band; we think it is symptomatic how Black Canary confesses to Barbara that “this is not how I expected my life to go, but hopefully it’ll get me back on my feet. And it’s only one album, what could it hurt? It is money coming in, after all” (Stewart, Fletcher, and Tarr 2014b, Vol. 4 #40, 22). In days of economic precarity, the only way out seems to be an absolute surrender to the designs of capital under the guise of aesthetics and diversity.

Community and future There is a whole new generation of teenage superheroines who confirm the simulacrum of an emancipation that, when reality dictates its terms, implies a subtle fidelity to capitalist dynamics. We talk about Moon Girl, Ironheart or the second Wasp, whose intellectual potential allows them to elude the harshness of their respective realities in certain ways. These three Marvel characters are recruited by scientific institutions and technological corporations in order to employ their superpowers for the good of humanity. Marvel Comics is playing, in a not very disguised way, a didactic role that encourages STEAM—acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics—vocations among female readers. This is an intention that has been extended to the new wave of young adult superhero literature sponsored by the major comic book publishers. One of the protagonists of this synergy between comics and literature for the younger readers is Kamala Khan, the current Ms. Marvel, who enjoyed her own comic book series between 2014 and 2020. Kamala combines past and future aspects of the superhero archetype and the precarious counterpart of its daily life. It is obvious that this Ms. Marvel has been created with Peter Parker as a model (Manning 2014). She is a teenager raised in New Jersey—a working-class community close to New York—although her emotional ties go beyond her family relations, as happened with Peter, to embrace her community, which includes Pakistani Muslim migrants (Wilson and Alphona 2014, Vol. 3 #1). The sense of community in the neighbourhood is so strong that Kamala’s family helps Bruno, a boy of Italian origin whose family is struggling financially, and triumphs over the attempts of a sinister real estate speculator who wants to gentrify the area by exploiting the image of Kamala as Ms. Marvel (Wilson and Miyazawa 2016, Vol. 4 #3). In short, readers face a third option aside from the class alienation that decades ago prevented Peter Parker from altering his way of behaving before the system, and the complacent acceptance by Batgirl of the variations and permutations of that system in order to avoid essential changes in their structures. Kamala is critical and self-critical, and well aware that the ability to transform the economic structures of society lies in the superpowers of the community (Wilson and Alphona 2015, Vol. 3 #11, 21). In this way, the character summarizes the aforementioned theories of Guy Standing, who not only has established the five aspects that make up the precariat—civil, political, cultural, social, and economic—but has qualified the last one as “the defining achievement of the twenty-first century” (Standing 2014, 5).

Super-Precariat 135

References Agard, Chancellor. 2021. “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Premiere Recap: Living through the ‘New World Order.’” Entertainment Weekly. https://ew.com/tv/recaps/ the-falcon-and-the-winter-soldier-season-1-episode-1/ Bates, Cary, Werner Roth and Vincent Colletta. 1972. Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane. Vol. 15 no. 121. New York: National Periodical Publications, Inc. Bayor, Ronald H. 1982. Neighborhoods in Urban America. Philadelphia: Kennikat Press. Bendis, Brian Michael, and Olivier Coipel. 2006. The New Avengers. Annual 1, no. 1. New York: Marvel Comics Group. Benton, Mike. 1989. The Comic Book in America: An Illustrated History. Dallas: Taylor Publishing. Bowman Cvetkovic, Vibiana. 2013. “Feminine Mystique: Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane in the ‘Silver Age’ of Comics.” In Examining Lois Lane: The Scoop on Superman’s Sweetheart, edited by Nadie Farghaly, 39–60. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Chute, Hillary. 2014. Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists. Chicago: Chicago UP. Cocca, Carolyn. 2021. “‘Part of Something Bigger’: Ms./Captain Marvel.” In The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama. New York: Routledge. VitalSource eBook. Goodwin, Archie, George Tuska and Billy Graham. 1972a. Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. Vol. 1 no. 1. New York: Marvel Comics Group. ———. 1972b. Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. Vol. 1 no. 3. New York: Marvel Comics Group. Hall, Richard A. 2019. The American Superhero: Encyclopedia of Caped Crusaders in History. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Hanley, Tim. 2017. The Many Lives of Catwoman: The Felonious History of a Feline Fatale. Chicago: Chicago Review Press Incorporated. Kindle eBook. Howe, Sean. 2012. Marvel Comics: La historia jamás contada. Translated by Santiago García. Gerona: Panini España. Jennings, Collier. 2021. “Marvel Superheroes Are the World’s Most Popular, Study Determines.” CBR. https://www.cbr.com/marvel-superheroes-worlds-most-popular/ Kidman, Shawna. 2019. Comic Books Incorporated: How the Business of Comics Became the Business of Hollywood. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kohl, Paul R. 2014. “Wonder Woman’s Lib: Feminism and the ‘New’ Amazing Amazon.” In The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joseph J. Darowski, 90–99. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. Lavin, Michael R. 1998. “Comic Books and Graphic Novels for Libraries: What to Buy,” Serials Review, Vol. 24 no. 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/ pii/S0098791399801178 Lee, Stan and Steve Ditko. 1962. Amazing Fantasy. Vol. 1 no. 15. New York: Marvel Comics Group. ———. 1963a. The Amazing Spider-Man. Vol. 1 no. 1. New York: Marvel Comics Group. ———. 1963b. The Amazing Spider-Man. Vol. 1 no. 2. New York: Marvel Comics Group. Lindner, Christopher and Gerard Sandoval, eds. 2021. Aesthetics of Gentrification: Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Manning, Shaun. 2014. “SDCC: Across the Spider-Verse”. CBR. https://www.cbr.com/ sdcc-across-the-spider-verse/

136  Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado McCausland, Elisa. 2017. Wonder Woman: El feminismo como superpoder. Madrid: Errata Naturae. McNulty, Mike. 2017. “The 20 Greatest (and 10 Worst) Spider-Man Villains of All Time. 2017.” Fansided.com. https://fansided.com/2017/06/30/spider-man-20-greatest-and-10worst-villains-of-all-time/ Miller, John Jackson. n.d. “1962 Comic Book Sales Figures.” The Comics Chronicle. http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/1960s/1962.html Misiroglu, Gina. 2012. The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes. Detroit: Visible Ink Press. Newbold, Jamie. 2018. The Forensic Comicologist: Insights from a Life in Comics. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. O’Keefe, Meghan. 2021. “‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’: Everyone Is Missing the Point of the Big Bank Scene.” Decider. https://decider.com/2021/03/22/falcon-and-thewinter-solider-why-doesnt-sam-wilson-have-money/ Perren, Alisa, and Gregory Steirer. 2021. The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Richardson, Ashley. 2017. “Fandom, Racism, and the Myth of Diversity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” College of William and Mary. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=2125&context=honorstheses Sacks, Jason. 2018. American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1990s (1990–1999). Raleigh: TwoMorrows Publishing. Savage, Jon. 2018. Teenage: La invención de la juventud. Translated by Enrique Maldonado Roldán. Madrid: Desperta Ferro Ediciones. Schoell, William. 2019. The Silver Age of Comics. Albany: BearManor Media. Slott, Dan, Christos N. Gage, Humberto Ramos and Victor Olazaba. 2014. Superior Spider-Man. Vol. 1 no. 22. New York: Marvel Comics Group. Smith, Kevin. 1995. Mallrats. Red Bank: View Askew Productions. Standing, Guy. 2014. A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Stewart, Cameron, Brenden Fletcher and Babs Tarr. 2014a. Batgirl. Vol. 4 no. 35. New York: DC Comics. ———.2014b. Batgirl. Vol. 4 no. 40. New York: DC Comics. Vélez, Anabel. 2017. Superheroínas, lo que no sabías sobre las mujeres más poderosas del cómic. Barcelona: Editorial Ma Non Troppo. Waid, Mark, Tom Peyer, Paul Azaceta and Javier Rodríguez. 2011. The Amazing Spider-Man. Vol. 1 no. 624. New York: Marvel Comics Group. Williams, J.P. 1994. “Transformations and Projections: Constructions of Femininity in Lois Lane,” Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 17 no. 1, October. Popular Culture Association in the South. Wilson, Willow G. and Adrian Alphona. 2014. Ms. Marvel. Vol. 3 no. 1. New York: Marvel Comics Group. ———. 2015. Ms. Marvel. Vol. 3 no. 11. New York: Marvel Comics Group. Wilson, Willow G. and Takeshi Miyazawa. 2016. Ms. Marvel. Vol. 4 no. 3. New York: Marvel Comics Group. Wright, Bradford W. 2001. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press.

9

“What Happens to a Dream Deferred?” Super Villains of African Descent in Classic Marvel Era1 Óscar Gual Boronat and Mario Millanes Vaquero

Introduction Black Panther (2018) was—apart from a significant box office success—a hit. This blockbuster opened the door for a new generation of African American actors and superheroes in cinema. Before Black Panther, heroes, heroines, and super villains of African descent were the exception. As Phillip Cunningham has stated: “Both the DC and Marvel universes feature a litany of supervillains who wield great power and great intellect and who pose a true threat to the superheroes in these respective universes. However, relatively few of these supervillains are black” (Cunningham 2010, 51).2 As a result, when Black Panther reached theatres, King T’Challa and Killmonger, his counterpart and his nemesis respectively, became familiar names for millions of filmgoers.3 Our main aim in this chapter is to highlight the appearance of super villains of African descent during the classic Marvel era. Our focus centres on New York ghetto, Harlem, in the 1960s and 1970s. We faced real-world problems, social issues such as overpopulation, poverty, and racism—then (and now) it was a “hideous moral cancer,” as DC Comics superhero Green Arrow expressed it over the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy (Nama 2013, 256). We are involved with civil rights and Black Power movement times, but also with the Vietnam War and the appearance of Blaxploitation cinema and Muhammad Ali (Nama 2013, 260–261). We must bear in mind that caricatures and stereotypes are two usual ways of representing people of African descent, but these are not always the proper one (Wanzo 2020, 5).

Black super villains Since the commercial success of Fantastic Four #1 (August 1961), one characteristic feature of Marvel Comics has been an original combination of amazing adventure and everyday naturalism. Most main characters during the classic Marvel era (1960–1970) were ambiguous heroes. These heroes faced real-life problems and serious down-to-earth challenges while attempting to achieve emotional stability. Although, on some occasions, the stories appeared in imagined and legendary contexts, there was no intention of losing sight of human-scale DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-13

138  Óscar Gual Boronat and Mario Millanes Vaquero concerns of the North American reader. During this period, the U.S. saw protracted ground battles for civil liberties, heroic movements often reflected in the mainstream comic publications of Marvel. Many of Marvel’s classic publications introduced African American characters whose attempts to improve their socioeconomic prospects and to achieve social integration were—in the world of their comic texts—thwarted. These villains, as a result, turned to crime. The Prowler and Diamond Head in The Amazing Spider-Man, Stone-Face and Deadly Nightshade in Captain America and the Falcon, and Diamondback, Chemistro, Mr. Fish, Piranha Jones, and Big Brother in Luke Cage/Power Man serve as strong character antagonists to their title’s respective heroes. The dreams of these young villains, survivors of repeated socioeconomic crises, were, in the Marvel Universe, deferred indefinitely. Through this exploration of the characteristics, origins, and evolution of these specific Marvel villains and the comic series in which they appear, we analyze the ways in which popular comics of the 60s and 70s sought—albeit with varying degrees of artistic success—to reflect the real-world challenges faced by marginalized communities. As Marvel comic books became more and more popular, the aforementioned descriptive intentionality—new to mass consumer products like comic books— moved beyond the scope of amateur criticism and began to attract the attention of cultural critics and journalists. An example of the same is seen in an article by Sally Kempton published in The Village Voice in 1965. Kempton’s text highlights the modernity of Marvel publications, comparing the innovation of these comic books to classic titles from previous Marvel phases. Kempton states: “Marvel Comics were the first comic books to evoke, even metaphorically, the Real World” (1965, 5). In an analytic effort which turned Marvel’s newer publications into objects of worship among their readers, Kempton notes that most of Marvel’s stories are set in New York City. For example, the heroic/tragic characters of the Hulk and the Thing, complex and tormented comic personalities, gather, in the world of Marvel, in the Big Apple. To illustrate her point, Kempton focuses on the case of Spider-Man, a character that she describes as neurotic. She emphasizes Peter Parker’s human profile and real identity. Parker is a youngster from Queens who is unable to socialize successfully. He is insecure and fainthearted and is, as such, quite different from simple, heroic depictions typical of Golden Age hero-protagonists, e.g., Superman and Batman, characters who—since their pre-World War II creation—have seen few real changes in terms of heroic characterization (Beaty 2005, 104–66). The aforementioned commitment to the in-comic inclusion of everyday heroes—a feature prominent in the work of Stan Lee and other cartoonists of The Amazing Spider-Man’s early stages, i.e., Steve Ditko and John Romita—is a salient feature in Marvel narrations, featuring action scenes and sentimental storytelling intended for consumption by young readers. Additionally, plot problems based on current events make an appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man. For example, university protests (#68, January 1969), the social repercussions of drug trafficking and drug abuse in the United States. (#96–98, May–July 1971), as well as conditions seen in the U.S. prison system (#99, August 1971). As we are going to show, “the

Super Villains of African Descent in Classic Marvel Era 139 wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States” (Wanzo 2020, 3).

The Prowler Normally the abovementioned matters are included in Marvel in plots in relation to the experiences of the protagonist and their immediate family. It should be noted, however, that secondary characters are also used in comic depictions of down-to-earth difficulties. In The Amazing Spider-Man #78 (November 1969), Spider-Man faces a new enemy, the Prowler. Hobie Brown, the Prowler’s alter ego, is an African American youth who works as a window washer in a firm run by a businessman, Mr. Clark. Brown’s employment is precarious, a dead-end job which does not meet his expectations or makes use of his abilities. As such, Brown takes steps to develop gadgets in order to make his job safer and easier. Brown then decides to present his prototypes to Mr. Clark in the hopes of winning the affection of his in-plot partner, Mindy. Unfortunately, Mr. Clark pays little attention to Brown’s inventions and rejects his proposals. Brown, justifiably annoyed by Clark’s callous treatment, quits his job as a window washer. In response, Mr. Clark states: “That’s okay with me, Brown! I’ve had it with your type!” (Lee, Buscema and Mooney 1969a, 16). The then-unemployed Brown continues to improve his gadgets and, having done so, decides, armed with his inventions, to begin a life of crime. Disguised as the Prowler, Brown plans to steal from the citizens of New York. Once the Prowler’s thefts appear in newspapers headlines, Brown then plans to return the stolen loot to its owners in the person of the then heroic Hobie Brown. However, Spider-Man’s foils his plans. After two issues in which Prowler battles Spider-Man unsuccessfully, Brown comes to regret his actions and admits his mistakes. Brown states: “All I wanted was a chance to use my talent to help people, but no one listened, no one cared! That’s always been the trouble, no one ever cares!” (Lee, Buscema and Mooney 1969b, 31). Brown’s comment relates to the historic moment of the comic publication. Only two years before the comics featuring the Prowler were published, the United States experienced a critical increase in street demonstrations protesting both the Vietnam War and the discrimination of minority groups. It is estimated that between 1964 and 1971 thousands of African American people participated in demonstrations in more than 150 U.S. cities. About 750 riots were recorded during that period in many parts of the country. From 1965 to 1968 there was an average of 300 street demonstrations, more than 50,000 detainees and 800 casualties, with demonstrations of considerable size occurring in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Newark, Los Angeles, and Cleveland (Carbone 2020, 86). In response, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders—also known as the Kerner Commission—was established at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The commission was tasked with investigating the societal factors motivating these movements. The commission’s findings, reported in 1968, concluded that the unrest was caused by lack of job opportunities, poverty, lack of access to education, housing segregation, labour marginalization

140  Óscar Gual Boronat and Mario Millanes Vaquero and police brutality. In “The Profile of a Rioter”—a report section informed by 1,200 interviews seeking to profile protestors—the report’s authors described the “typical” protestor as follows: The typical rioter in the summer of 1967 was a Negro, unmarried male between the ages of 15 and 24. He was in many ways very different from the stereotype. He was not a migrant. He was born in the state and was a lifelong resident of the city in which the riot took place. Economically his position was about the same as his Negro neighbors who did not actively participate in the riot. Although he had not, usually, graduated from high school, he was somewhat better educated than the average inner-city Negro, having at least attended high school for a time. Nevertheless, he was more likely to be working in a menial or low status job as a usual unskilled laborer. If he was employed, he was not working full time and his employment was frequently interrupted by periods of unemployment. He feels strongly that he deserves a better job and that he is barred from achieving it, not because of lack of training, ability, or ambition, but because of discrimination by employers. He rejects the white bigot’s stereotype of the Negro as ignorant and shiftless. He takes great pride in his race and believes that in some respects Negroes are superior to whites. He is extremely hostile to whites, but his hostility is more apt to be a product of social and economic class than of a race; he is almost equally hostile toward middle class Negroes.4 The figure of Hobie Brown is an ideal model for the “rioter” referred to in the commission’s report. Brown is a young African American with abilities that go unrecognized and unrewarded. When confronted with institutionalized oppression and professional indifference, Brown chooses unlawful activities in the hopes of improving his prospects and gaining positive social visibility. Statistics contemporary to Prowler’s publication also emphasize these same scarcities and systemic difficulties in the world of the reader. During the period of the comic’s publication, the U.S. unemployment rate for the white population was 3.5% or 1.5% for married white men. Unemployment for the remainder of the U.S. population was, unfortunately, over 6.5%. In the twenty largest U.S. cities, a third of young African Americans were unemployed. Most young African Americans who were employed, worked part-time jobs, and only about 6% were able to attend university. Half of African American families had an annual income under $5,000 (Porter 1968, 6–C). Although the Prowler is not considered Marvel’s first black super villain— “what’s more, in the earliest stages of his conception, he wasn’t even black (probably not, anyway)” (Stewart 2019)5 —nowadays Prowler is worthy of recognition as an antagonist-pioneer given his comic book origins and stated villain motivations. Before Prowler’s publication there were other powerful black

Super Villains of African Descent in Classic Marvel Era 141 Marvel villains. For example, Centurius appears in Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 (July 1968), and M’Baku the Man-Ape in Avengers #62 (March 1969). In any case, the aforementioned characters all share in a traditional concept of comic book villainy, i.e., characters who are egocentric, strong, narcissist, and obsessed both with revenge and absolute power. However, the Prowler appears as a villain in one of Marvel’s flagship publications, The Amazing SpiderMan, a comic distinguished by the inclusion of contemporary urban adventures that tend to exclude the cosmic adversaries and clichéd magical events of other series. The Prowler serves as comic book representation of day-to-day challenges tackled by the many readers of the Spider-Man series. As a villain, the Prowler is the first in a line of masked criminals seeking compensation for societal injustices. Hobie Brown—and related villains later described—usually come from modest socioeconomic backgrounds in which they, as youths, are exposed to or participated in criminal acts. This group of villains is introduced in comic books whose protagonists are, in general, African American superheroes operating in ostensibly realistic city settings. Because the backstories of the Marvel villains of the Prowler group tend to be, in plot terms, entangled in the goings-on of the series’ various superheroes, these villains do not often appear in other comic series. Moreover, Marvel’s Prowler-like villains are short-lived characters, who usually die, resign, or reform during their comic’s action—as we are going to show later. Of the Prowler villain group, he is the longest lasting and most significant character. For example, Prowler will appear again in The Amazing SpiderMan #87 (August 1970) and #93 (February 1971), stories during which Prowler serves both as an ally and antagonist to Parker. In these appearances, Prowler’s role as victim of societal inequity is highlighted. For example, the societal difficulties seen in the district in which Brown lives are highlighted during the plot. In the short term, the Prowler character is allowed a secondary role—as seen in titles such as The Defenders and Deadly Hands of Kung Fu—but as the series progresses Hobie Brown’s criminal alter ego figures with less plot prominence. Finally, the Prowler reforms and will become an urban hero.

Diamond Head Two months before the publication of The Amazing Spider-Man #78 (November 1969), it appeared a new villain seen in a variety of Marvel titles. Diamond Head is distinct from the model posed by Hobie Brown as an empowered outcastvillain forced to break the law by tragic social inequities. In Captain America #117 (September 1969), Steve Rogers, alter ego of “Guardian of Liberty,” meets Upper Manhattan African American youth Sam Wilson under peculiar circumstances. Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson become friends, and Wilson, in turn, takes on the winged mantel of the Falcon, a new superhero under Captain America’s protection. From the Falcon’s inception, Wilson—intent on service to his New York community—returns to Harlem to help those in need after his return from adventures on the Island of Exiles. Falcon states: “So long as there’s tragedy and need and injustice among my people this is where the Falcon belongs!” (Lee,

142  Óscar Gual Boronat and Mario Millanes Vaquero Colan and Giacoia 1970, 32). The Falcon—playing the role both of masked hero and social worker—moves his headquarters into Harlem, a plot device utilized by Marvel writers to showcase socioeconomic difficulties. The Falcon scripts— written by Stan Lee—are concerned with striking a balance between superheroic adventure, reader entertainment, and the narrative analysis of societal ills. The Captain America-Falcon team-up, showcased in “The Fate of the Falcon” (#126, June 1970), serves to frustrate the criminal plots of Diamond Head and the criminal organization for which he works in titles concerned with the societal difficulties, as seen, for example, in “Madness in the Slums!” (#133, January 1971). Here the role of villain-menace is undertaken by classic Captain America antagonist, Modok, criminal kingpin of the AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) organization. Modok seeks to take revenge on Captain America, representative of a heroic code which Modok opposes. Intending to discredit Captain America, Modok builds a large android (Bulldozer) and sends it into Harlem, tasked with the demolition of buildings in which citizens live in considerable poverty. Bulldozer is welcomed by residents who exclaim: “At least AIM cares about us!” (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971a, 18). Captain America and the Falcon, surprised at the residents’ welcome of the robot, state: “The people are cheering him! They think he’s helping them” (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971a, 14). Captain America defeats Bulldozer. The crowd reacts negatively to the Captain’s heroics. Police officers on the scene warn the heroes: “Take it easy, you guys! You don’t wanna start a riot!” (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971a, 15). Serving to reflect current events in the world of the comic’s reader, during Bulldozer’s demolition, the crowd chants: “Power to the people!” or “AIM must befriend the oppressed!” (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971a, 14). The Falcon then states: “Can’t blame the brothers! Anything is better than those hovels they have to live in” (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971a, 15). In contrast, Steve Rogers describes the pro-Bulldozer faction as “innocent pawns” (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971a, 17). In relation to the aforementioned chaos, Modok’s monologue is worth mentioning: Wherever people suffer, wherever they are down-trodden, they are ripe for exploitation! So long as slums and poverty and racism exist. I will have a breeding ground for my own form of evil! And those, like Captain America, who truly try to help thru reason and understanding will be scorned and discredited by those who have been betrayed too often! Thus, I must continue to inflame them, I must blind them to the fact that they themselves will suffer most from violence! (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971a, 16) This depiction of Harlem is of interest. Given that these stories were written to be sold as consumer goods, we must bear in mind that their content is not often based on detailed sociological data. However, the socioeconomic difficulties of New York districts portrayed in Marvel Comics was, one can argue, public knowledge. These northern districts saw rapid population growth from rural migration from southern states during the 1950s. Many African American

Super Villains of African Descent in Classic Marvel Era 143 migrants of the period were forced to leave rural areas in order to obtain employment in large urban centres, settling in downtown districts while upper and middle-class white residents migrated to the suburbs. At the outset of the migration of the 1950s, an average of 42% of African American families lived in segregated city centres. By 1970, 58% of African American families lived in segregated city centres (Massey and Denton 1988, 592). These families suffered from a lack of basic services, properties in decline, an absence of permanent industrial and/ or commercial job opportunities, mobility restrictions, an absence of financial support and collapsing infrastructure.

Stone-Face The above-mentioned historical context is clearly reflected in many Marvel Comics of the period. In these comic books realism is highlighted by Gene Colan’s figurative style, the same illustrator in many of these titles. It is also relevant that issue #134 (February 1971) was retitled Captain America and the Falcon, a nod to the series’ new plot course and proof of Wilson’s more prominent role. A plot change was made so as to adapt to social trends and to engage African American readers. In issue #134, Stone-Face is introduced as an African American villain, and the “scourge” of the city (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971b, 1). He is a local gangster whom the protagonists, Captain America and the Falcon, must confront. Stone-Face is, it should be noted, a representative of an archetype distinct from the Prowler-type villain group. Firstly, Stone-Face has no supernatural powers or special physical and/or intellectual abilities, but he is the charismatic leader of a dissatisfied population group, keeping marginalized youths busy through participation in extortion networks and illegal gambling. One such young person is Sam Wilson’s nephew, Jody Casper, who gains favour with Stone-Face while working for him as a bookie. Casper, however, later admits the error of his association with Stone-Face. Nevertheless, the comic’s authors make clear that in-plot rehabilitation is unavailable to some characters. In the conclusion of the story, panels featuring the Falcon, it is stated: We were lucky with Jody. But I’m thinking of all the thousands of kids like him out there. Kids who ain’t gonna be so lucky. Kids who’ve lost faith in the law, in the world around them and in themselves. Kids with no one to turn to, no one to trust, with nothing but bitterness and contempt for the system. Where do they go, Cap? What do they do? What chance do they have? (Lee, Colan and Ayers 1971b, 32)6 In the text-world of Captain America and the Falcon, social desperation allows criminals such as Stone-Face to commit crimes with seeming impunity. As a matter of fact, Stone-Face reappears in “It Happens in Harlem” (#138, June 1971). Motivated by a desire for revenge, Stone-Face threatens the city authorities with a riot. Stone-Face states: “My people ain’t gonna like you buildin’ that dump!

144  Óscar Gual Boronat and Mario Millanes Vaquero And you’ll see riots and burnin’ like ya never saw before. Just you remember, I’m the one they listen to here! What I say goes!” (Lee and Romita 1971, 13). Although the threatened riot does not then occur, it is the case that maintaining the peace during comic’s later chapters becomes increasingly difficult while the good intentions of Captain America prove increasingly ineffective. As the social tension of the text-world increases, new secondary African American characters are introduced and, in turn, serve as symbols for the conflicts between many factions in New York. For example, Reverend Garcia preaches peaceful coexistence and mutual understanding. Conversely, Leila, in support of immediate revolution, accuses Falcon of being uncommitted to community causes. The comic’s conflict comes to a head in “Power to the People!” #143 (November 1971). In an extended special issue, the series’ new staff, scriptwriter Gary Friedrich and artist John Romita, tell a three-part story regarding American racism. Young members of the People’s Militia take to the streets. Motivated by ancestral hardship and segregation, the People’s Militia members state during street protests: “Harlem belongs to us! Get the pigs out of our country!” (Friedrich and Romita 1971, 26). Disorder is then provoked by mysterious masked figures and their clenched-fist salutes. Captain America and the Falcon then discover that World War II archenemy, Red Skull, is behind the appearance of the masked figures. As seen in the above-mentioned New York machinations of Modok and Stone-Face, Red Skull takes advantage of disasters and public unrest to carry out self-serving plans. Although there are no causalities caused by the riot provoked by Red Skull, the event is important to the series’ plot development. Particularly relevant is the Falcon’s subsequent break from Steve Rogers, an alliance dissolved by Falcon in order to mark his disagreement more clearly with Roger’s often paternalistic attitudes towards the community they both seek to serve. The FalconCapitan America separation—a team change accompanied by an alteration in the Falcon’s costume—is narrated in the series’ next issue. Although Falcon and Captain America do collaborate as crime fighters during future issues, the dissolution of the Falcon-Captain America team does mark a gradual retreat from plots during which issues of social justice are actively considered.

Deadly Nightshade Helmed by writer Steve Englehart and illustrators Sal Buscema and Alan Weiss, future iterations of Captain America and the Falcon saw a radical shift towards more explicitly political plots, which increased sales. Englehart was tasked with revitalizing the series to prevent its cancellation. Making use of the Prowler legacy, the publication introduced a villain, Deadly Nightshade, in issue #164 (August 1973). Deadly Nightshade is a hypersexualized African American supervillain from a humble socioeconomic background. Gifted scientist Tilda Johnson/Deadly Nightshade is an only child raised in a poor Harlem family. Hoping to escape poverty, Johnson agrees to join forces with historic Marvel villain Yellow Claw, but she is then deserted by him following the failure of her experiments. Moreover, Deadly Nightshade’s first confrontations with Captain

Super Villains of African Descent in Classic Marvel Era 145 America and the Falcon seem, at best, anecdotal, while her attitude towards the two heroes appears naïve and provocative. During future development of Deadly Nightshade’s character, Englehart does, however, manage to give depictions of the villain in greater depth. In said depictions of Deadly Nightshade, issues related to socioeconomic class prove to be of greater importance than race. For example, in relation to economic ambitions tied both to her innate scientific abilities and fears regarding the poverty of her childhood, Deadly Nightshade states: “I want to be a queen! It’s not fair! I spent years working out my formula” (Englehart and Weiss 1973, 26). Struggling to admit defeat during confrontations with Captain America and the Falcon, she states, “This was my chance. My chance to be important for just once!” (Englehart and Weiss 1973, 27). Like Hobie Brown, Tilda Johnson grows up in poverty and reaches adulthood at the end of the 1950s, a period during which—according to findings published by the United States Census Bureau—55,1% of African Americans lived in conditions of economic distress.7 As an adult, Johnson—as seen in the aforementioned case of the rejected inventions of Brown—makes use of unique abilities undervalued by the society in which she lives. Like the Prowler, Deadly Nightshade will (if periodically) appear throughout the decade in Marvel publications but will not achieve plot importance as an antagonist. She does, however, enjoy greater relevance in Power Man & Iron Fist, a title that includes the team-up of two heroes who previously headed other series. Power Man & Iron Fist can be defined as “a comic book version of the blaxploitation/martial arts double bills that were popular during the mid-1970s” (Pustz 2020, 214).

Conclusion As Dwayne McDuffie (1962–2011) has explained: “Black people could be anything. They could be the king, they could be the street sweeper, they could be the good guy, they could be the bad guy” (Walker 2005, 78). Harlem is another character, the epitome of all American inner cities’ black ghettos, the symbol of segregation. It can be argued that the backstories of the villains included in this article are ostensibly interchangeable. These villains tend to come from precarious socioeconomic backgrounds and turn to crime for the sake of survival, revenge, or riches. Most of the chapter’s villains appear in Marvel publications infrequently. For example, Diamondback features in ten comic book pages and then disappears. In response to current United States upheaval and motivated by commercial interests, some villains here considered have been reintroduced into recent Marvel publications with varying degrees of artistic success. Moreover, the publication of comic books which feature the villains here described tends to correspond to periods of increase in U.S. crime rates and the subsequent misplaced (and often racially motivated) societal blame for said crimes. Narcisse, for example, has stated: The first waves of Black superheroes started showing up in comics decades ago, dreamed up in editorial offices staffed almost entirely by white men.

146  Óscar Gual Boronat and Mario Millanes Vaquero (…) They all had early stories linked to the midcentury idea of the ghetto and were often only used when creators wanted to comment on social unrest or systemic injustice. These heroes’ primary purpose was to attract new readers to publishers like Marvel and DC. (Narcisse 2021) Precarity, race, and youth are the three terms that converge in these pages. This combination was perceived as a clear menace and a terrible peril in Marvel comic books. Racism appeared in every area of representation, also in art. Thus, society’s fears are present in these artistic representations (Thomas 2017, 132–146). Super villains of African descent exemplify what White felt about Non-White people. Stan Lee (and others) offered a paternalistic point of view in most cases. Under these circumstances, an African American artist such as Billy Graham had little space for self-representation.8 Nowadays, comic books are increasingly inclusive, and Afrofuturistic graphic novels are enjoying a period of popularity. Two relevant examples are the Damian Duffy and John Jennings 2017 adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979), and the debut of novelist N.K. Jemisin as comic writer with artist Jamal Campbell in the Far Sector series in 2019. Before finishing, we must mention the contemporary Marvel example of Riri Williams/Ironheart, a Chicagoborn MIT-trained tech-genius. Williams is an African American teenager who replaces Tony Stark as Iron Man in order to do battle with Lucia von Bardas, a cyborg villain (Brown 2021, 51). The superhero success of Riri Williams—not to mention the increasing prominence and popularity of Miles Morales’s SpiderMan and Black Panther scientist, Shuri—in attracting new readers to Marvel publications does, however, beg the question: What is Marvel’s next move in relation to black super villains?

Notes

1. The above verses are lifted from the first line of the poem “Harlem [2],” also known as “Dream Deferred,” which is included in Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) by African American author Langston Hughes (Hughes 1995, 426). The cited poem continues with the following: Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun? / Or fester like a sore— / And then run? / Does it stink like rotten meat? / Or crust and sugar over— / like a syrupy sweet? / Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load. / Or does it explode? We have chosen to utilize Hughes’ opening line to serve as a metaphor for this chapter’s content. Thanks also to Universidad del Norte (Barranquilla, Colombia) professor, Dr. Steven K. McClain, for his suggestions regarding the first draft of this text. 2. See also: Jeffrey A. Brown, Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020). 3. This essay serves as a humble but sincere homage to the late Chadwick Boseman (1976–2020), in memoriam. 4. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), 73.

Super Villains of African Descent in Classic Marvel Era 147

5. See also: Osvaldo Oyola, “Black Communities of the 30th Century: Racial Assimilation and Ahistoricity in Superhero Comics.” Apex Magazine. (June 3, 2014). 6. In the above cited, Falcon is speaking from informed personal experience. Later Marvel publications reveal that Wilson was once an orphaned youth forced to seek protection in criminal circles under the alias “Snap” Wilson (Mind Cage! #186, June 1975). 7. United States Census Bureau. “Poverty Status of People by Family Relationship, Race and Hispanic Origin.” https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/ demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html. 8. Luke Cage/Power Man contributions of African American artist and co-scriptwriter William Henderson Graham (1935–1997) are worthy of note (Brown 2009, 23–24; Howe 2018). Graham’s vivid style and creative presence serve as an important counterpoint to the overwhelming whiteness of Marvel’s creators. This “Irreverent”—his Bullpen name was “The Irreverent” (Lantz 2019, 16)—inker and penciler was also best known for his work on the Jungle Action series featuring “Black Panther” (Howe 2018). Graham, the only black artist at Marvel—a rarity in comics at the time—was still developing his talents. He was “initially instructed to make sure that [George] Tuska’s African-American characters looked African-American” (Hagen 2019, 10). Graham was the exception in the then (white) world of comics and had a little creative space for his development. As James Lantz puts it, we must acknowledge Graham for having “paved the way for the likes of Christopher Priest, Reginald Hudlin, Jamal Igle, Denys Cowan, and so many other African-American comic-book writers and artists who followed his footsteps” (2019, 16).

References Beaty, Bart. 2005. “Wertham and the Critique of Comic Books.” In Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture, 104–166. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Brown, Jeffrey A. 2009. Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ———. 2021. Panthers, Hulks and Ironhearts: Marvel, Diversity and the 21st Century Superhero. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Carbone, Valeria L. 2020. Una historia del movimiento negro estadounidense en la era post derechos civiles (1968–1988). Valencia: PUV. Cunningham, Phillip Lamarr. 2010. “The Absence of Black Supervillains in Mainstream Comics.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 1, no. 1 (June 3): 51–62. https://doi. org/10.1080/21504851003798330. Englehart, Steve and Alan L. Weiss. 1973. “Queen of the Werewolves.” Captain America and the Falcon no. 164 (August). New York: Marvel Comics. Friedrich, Gary, and John Romita. 1971. “Power to the People!” Captain America and the Falcon no. 143 (November). New York: Marvel Comics. Hagen, Dan. 2019. “Luke Cage, Hero for Hire.” Back Issue 114 (August): 3–15. Howe, Sean. 2018. “Black Panther, Luke Cage and the First Black Artist to Draw Both.” New York Times (March 7). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/movies/blackpanther-luke-cage-artist-billy-graham.html. Hughes, Langston. 1995. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Vintage. Kempton, Sally. 1965. “Super-Anti-Hero in Forest Hills: Spiderman’s [sic] Dilemma.” The Village Voice (April 1): 5, 15–16. Lantz, James Heath. 2019. “The Comics Career of Billy Graham.” Back Issue 114 (August): 16–21.

148  Óscar Gual Boronat and Mario Millanes Vaquero Lee, Stan, John Buscema and Jim Mooney. 1969a. “The Night of the Prowler.” The Amazing Spider-Man no. 78 (November). New York: Marvel Comics. ———. 1969b. “To Prowl No More.” The Amazing Spider-Man no. 79 (December). New York: Marvel Comics. Lee, Stan, Gene Colan and Dick Ayers. 1971a. “Madness in the Slums!” Captain America no. 133 (January). New York: Marvel Comics. ———. 1971b. “They Call Him Stone-Face.” Captain America and the Falcon no. 134 (February). New York: Marvel Comics. Lee, Stan, Gene Colan and Frank Giacoia. 1970. “The Fate of the Falcon.” Captain America no. 126 (June). New York: Marvel Comics. Lee, Stan and John Romita. 1971. “It happens in Harlem.” Captain America and the Falcon no. 138 (June). New York: Marvel Comics. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A., Denton. 1988. “Suburbanization and Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.” American Journal of Sociology 94, no. 3 (November): 592–626. Nama, Adilifu. 2013. “Color Them Black.” In The Superhero Reader, edited by Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester, 252–268. Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi. Narcisse, Evan. 2021. “The Black Superheroes to See Next.” The New York Times (April 23). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/arts/black-superheroes-comic-books.html. Oyola, Osvaldo. 2014. “Black Communities of the 30th Century: Racial Assimilation and Ahistoricity in Superhero Comics.” Apex Magazine (3 June). https://apex-magazine. com/black-communities-of-the-30th-century-racial-assimilation-and-ahistoricity-insuperhero-comics/. Porter, Sylvia. 1968. “Poor People’s March Backed by Statistics.” St. Petersburg Times (May 17): 6–C. Pustz, Matthew J. 2020. “A True Son of K’un-Lun: The Awkward Racial Politics of White Martial Arts Superheroes in the 1970s.” In Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superheroe Comics, edited by Sean Guynes and Martin Lund, 212–225. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. 1968. New York: Bantam Books. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/national-advisory-commissioncivil-disorders-report. Stewart, Alan. 2019. “Amazing Spider-Man #78 (November, 1969). (August 17).” https:// 50yearoldcomics.com/2019/08/17/amazing-spider-man-78-november-1969/. Thomas, P. L. 2017. “Can Superhero Comics Defeat Racism? Black Superheroes ‘Torn between Sci-Fi Fantasy and Cultural Reality.’” In Teaching Comics Through Multiple Lenses: Critical Perspectives, edited by Crag Hill, 132–146. New York: Routledge. Walker, David. 2005. “From Mainstream to Milestone: Dwayne McDuffie.” Back Issue 8 (February): 77–87. Wanzo, Rebecca. 2020. The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging. New York: New York University Press.

Part IV

Surviving in a Precarious Market: Labour Insecurity and the Publishing Sector

10 Precarious Identity Labelling Oneself Fumettista? Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele

A new generation of women comics artists Although the comics industry has been a male world for a long time, women have always been involved in Italian comics, as cartoonists, writers, comics creators, editorial directors, or editors. Starting with Paola Lombroso (1871–1954), who came up with the concept for Corriere dei Piccoli, the first comics magazine in Italy, and with Lina Buffolente (1924–2007), the first woman fumettista (comics artist). Generation after generation, their presence in ninth art has continued and increased: as comics artist and publisher Laura Scarpa explains, the presence of women in comics goes hand in hand with their political and social history (Bonomi et al. 2020, 20), in particular in the 2000s, when new technologies and even more women artists emerge. According to Scarpa, the sex ratio in the industry—at least in “authorial” comics or in some genres—is, in fact, moving towards an inversion in numbers (Bonomi et al. 2020, 22). Arguably, the Italian comics market has only recently discovered ninth art produced by young women. During the 2020s this resulted in a new generation of fumettiste (born after 1980), who got the attention of both public and critics. This generation of authors navigates between mainstream and alternative channels, such as social media, collective or self-publishing productions, in constructing their own audience. They are also marked by their time, growing up in the nineties, with the spread of manga—in particular shōjo manga1—the Internet—followed by social networks—and the increasing relevance of fairs and festivals. These three elements paved the way for both women who had already approached comics and girls, creators, or readers, that were preparing to do so hesitantly (Scrivo quoted in Bonomi et al. 2020, 161). This generation enters comics industry in the 2010s, when the graphic novel booms in Italy, in part because of the Zerocalcare phenomenon.2 The success of the graphic novel as a format in the 2010s had also been prepared between the nineties and the beginning of the 2000s, as the end of the magazine period led new publishers to publish comics books (Tosti 2016, 881). As Andrea Tosti indicates, the presence of romanzi a fumetto both in libraries and on newspapers (2016, 876) appealed to these publishers’ intent on gaining mainstream interest in comics. DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-15

152  Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele The rise of women in comics, coinciding with the book-format explosion, resulted in an increasing number of graphic novels made by women artists. New publishers, specialized in graphic novels, were fundamental in this respect: BeccoGiallo Editore, for example, was one of the first to give attention to young authors. In 2012 it published Ci sono notti che non accadono mai (There are nights that never happen), the first graphic novel by Silvia Rocchi; a year later, her exhibition at the Bologna comics festival BilBolBul was one of the first events dedicated to an artist of her generation. In 2013, Canicola Edizioni, a small publisher born as a self-publishing entity always attentive to young artists, printed Roghi [Blazes], by Anna Deflorian; Diabolo Edizioni, another small, alternative publisher, edited Lucia Biagi’s Punto di fuga [There are nights that never happen] in 2014. In the following years, especially since the middle of the decade, talented comics artists gained increasing attention. In 2015 and just to mention a few of them, the first comic books by Alice Milani (Wisława Szymborska: si dà il caso che io sia qui [It turns out that I am], BeccoGiallo Editore) and Alice Socal (Sandro, Eris Edizioni) came out, in addition to Giulia Sagramola’s second book (Incendi estivi [Summer Fires], Bao Publishing); in 2016 Cristina Portolano made her debut with Quasi signorina [Nearly Miss], thanks to Topipittori. More publishers would give space to graphic novels made by young women, up to the point where they produced anthologies conceived to collect and promote them. In 2018, Diabolo Edizioni dared to release the all-women anthology Materia Degenere [Degenerate Matter]: five short stories by five novice authors, each of them focusing on a different genre. Feltrinelli’s Post Pink. Antologia di fumetto femminista [Post Pink: Anthology of  Feminist Comics] would follow one year later, with a more explicit reference to feminism, reuniting some of the most representative creators of the generation. Doubtlessly, 2019 legitimized this new wave, when the major debut prizes at Napoli Comicon, Treviso Comic Book Festival and Lucca Comics & Games festivals, three of the most important events in Italy, were awarded ex aequo to young artists ZUZU3 (Cheese) and Fumettibrutti4 (Romanzo esplicito [Explicit Novel]), with two autobiographical graphic novels. Published by two of the most important comics publishers specialized in graphic novels, Coconino Press and Feltrinelli Comics, both were debuts backed up and promoted with strong marketing strategies by recognized comics artists currently working as editorial directors.5 In short, a spontaneous trend was detected by the publishing system and incorporated, leading to a unique media exposure for these artists.6 Notwithstanding the obvious diversity of these authors’ artistic output, recurring elements can be observed in their cited works. In spite of different styles and techniques, in most cases these comics artists narrate the intimate and the personal, describing not fantasy worlds but rather realistic stories.7 In contrast—or maybe because of that—their adopted visual styles are often strongly personal. Above all, most of them took their first steps online, first during the “blogosphere” period8 and later, around 2010–2011, with social networks’—Facebook firstly—rapid spread.9 The same years saw an increasing legitimation of DIY practices in comics, leading to a boom in the 2010s. An example of such DIY is the self-printed work Suomi (suomi in italics!) by Laura Camelli (see Figure 10.1).

Precarious Identity 153

Figure 10.1  Excerpt from the comic book Suomi, published online between 2014 and 2017, later self-printed by Laura “La Came” Camelli with Associazione Culturale Mammaiuto. The work is a graphic journal of the artist’s journey in Finland.

In this chapter, we will try to explain this production, starting with a survey we held with a number of young Italian female comics artists. The questionnaire, that will take up a big part of our essay, is later combined with an analysis of the artists’ path. While alternative publications or graphic novels that embrace (auto)biography are the most common form the artists adopt, we also indicate fewer common themes or form(at)s. This chapter is also studying how precarious their position as artists is and whether DIY is a conscious choice, resulting in different outcomes and genres for different markets. Furthermore, we wanted to let the artists’ voices be heard, by asking them how their situation influences their self-perception and identity as fumettiste.

Understanding the fumettista. A questionnaire This chapter is the outcome and interpretation of a mixed-method sociological enquiry involving 34 young women comics artists (November 2020–February 2021). The selection was made using the following parameters: all the participants were born after 1980,10 they identify themselves at present with the female gender and they are professionally linked to Italy’s publishing market through the publication of at least one book, or the participation in one book—in the last five years—with

154  Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele a national editor. In addition, these artists had experience, in their careers, through self-publishing or, in general, alternative channels—such as publishing digital comics on social media platforms. 21 women out of the 34 selected artists answered the questionnaire.11 To get a clear insight into the authors we are studying, we designed a LimeSurvey questionnaire which we sent via email. The survey revolved around four strands: the artists themselves (focusing on their education, identity building and generational (dis)similarities); their artistic output inspiration, genres, themes, styles, techniques, formats, places of publication and success; the importance of certain genres (autobiography) or formats (graphic novel, fanzines, anthologies, etc.); and the reasons for the precarity of their job—job inherent or gender related—to understand if, despite the increase of this production, the gender gap in comics jobs follows the employment imbalance existing in Italy.12 The starting point of our survey revolved around the possible ambiguous label of fumettista. Most authors preferred the term fumetto13 over the English term “comics” to define their work, while “graphic novel” denominated for them the format of a book to be found in bookshops rather than the medium itself. In any case, the hypothetical categories did not entail all alternatives (Dejasse 2014, 35), which is probably why, even at the end of the questionnaire, two artists claimed that they identify themselves rather with the denomination illustratrice. Moreover, artists adapted the definition of their work to the publishing context: 16 artists have been published abroad, where they were well or even better received than in Italy.14 But most of the artists (16) are living and working in Italy, and so fumetto as a term “does justice” to the Italian word and practice. The choice for fumetto might also derive from the fact that most of these women are consciously and specifically, either studying Fumetto e Illustrazione at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna (6),15 training in other Academies of Fine Arts (6, and one abroad at LUCA School of Arts Belgium) or taking two or three-year courses in comics schools (6) or in academies or institutes like IED, NABA or IAAD (1). Most of them (19), however, feel that this formal preparation does not define them as fumettiste, only two were convinced that this training turned them into comics artists. This reality underscores Menu’s and Dejasse’s idea of alternative comics being less ethnocentric and thus more readily “exportable” than traditional comics (Menu 1999; Dejasse 2014). Greco has termed them “deterritorialized narratives” (2014, 267), Stein, Denson and Meyer have opted for “transnational” (Stein et al. 2013), and many are to be found in “deterritorialized” flourishing bookshops and festivals which favour international collaborations such as Inuit bookshop and BilBolBul Festival in Bologna. What about their artistic output and format preference? 11 of them stated to privilege the format of the graphic novel. This might be a result of our selection parameters. Other formats mentioned were in particular short stories (7), presumably a “steppingstone towards longer narratives in the future”; alongside online cartoons or chapters, in some cases for social media like Instagram or membership platforms such as Patreon. Since these women belong to the same generation, they have been part of the same collectives and started publishing around the same time (during the 2010s);

Precarious Identity 155 several questions targeted possible similarities in style, themes, and inspiration. While the majority of the 21 artists who answered enumerated heterogeneous influences, some names kept reappearing. Italian artists mentioned twice or more were Davide Toffolo, Manuele Fior and Altan.16 However, these women clearly search for transnational inspiration in authors such as Frederik Peeters (2), Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (3), Olivier Schrauwen (2), Adrian Tomine (2), David Mazzucchelli (2) or Simon Hanselmann (2), Joann Sfar (2), Jamie Hewlett (2), Ai Yazawa (2), Craig Thompson (2), Camille Jourdy (2) or Daniel Clowes, remembering what Dejasse has claimed “heralds of the independent comics scene” (Dejasse 2014, 37). They are arguably the first generation who actively read manga—as we explained before—and were influenced by magazines such as Mondo Naif 17: but the inspiration is not necessarily from the past, as two artists refer to one of their peers, Alice Socal. This does not come as a surprise as many of them claimed that their professional identity was formed both individually and through collectives such as La Trama or Attaccapanni Press (9) rather than during their formative years, seeming to be the starting point of their future careers. Furthermore, these women are inspired by studies in Fine Arts or other media such as painting, illustration, and cinema. As a result, their output is quite eclectic, as they use a wide range of techniques and more than half of them opt for mixed media to create their comics.18 As their inspiration is both similar and eclectic and many of these women have worked together, we were interested in whether this amounts to (dis)similar artistic output. While 8 artists did not see similar generational tendencies, 9 artists claimed they did and several of them noticed that (auto)biography dominates; simultaneously, 9 of them expressed the need to “talk about themselves with explicit autobiography, or generational comics (see Figure 10.2).” We will return to the shared interest in the booming “genres” biography and autobiography, both highly marketable choices,19 as the focus of some editors on comics biographies reveals (Dallavalle 2020, footnote 3) after discussing the artists’ economic situation and whether possible precariousness is perceived as gender related.

The question of gender Hilary Chute claims that graphic women “investigate concerns related to the silence and invisibility of the private, particularly centred on issues of sexuality, and all address childhood trauma” (2010, 4). Similarly, these young women authors seem to declare: “My drawing and body are my own.”20 Statements like these are essentially labels that artificially separate female and male artists for discussion and can therefore be potentially biased—the same thing could count for our chapter. We asked these young women if they had been “labelled” for their gender excessively. Even though some artists have never felt this to be an issue, others (13) do: none of them saw it as a personal choice or as something caused by social media but rather blamed the general press (7), festivals (4) and the specialized press (2) for this label. In an industry where the majority of editors, critics, journalists, and jury members are still men, examples of gender stigmatization are interview

156  Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele questions enquiring about personal lives—relationships, fashion, the desire for children or women conversation, with a direct influence on promotion of their works. Reactions to this gender inequality is artists choosing an artistic name that does not reveal their gender (e.g., Roberta “Joe1” Muci) or the need to create feminist collectives such as Moleste.21

Figure 10.2  “Television is dead. Would you ever have said that? We were parked there for years. It raised us. It educated us. And when it died, we were in front of the computer. What immoral children.” Excerpt from the first generational graphic novel realized by Nova, Stelle o sparo (Bao Publishing, 2018). Source: Stelle o sparo © 2018 Alessandra De Santis/BAO Publishing.

Precarious Identity 157 Only 8 out of 21 artists sensed a strong or vague difference in the promotion of their works with respect to male colleagues: if some of these artists feel you must be “double as good,” editors and cultural organizers seem to profit from what we could call “marketable feminism.” In some cases, this results in a difference in readers’ reception, especially when the divide between authors and protagonists becomes narrow, or when artists draw female nude.

Analyzing the content: Self-biography In their works, and in line with Dejasse’s observation that the graphic novel is inevitably assimilated to the autobiographical “genre”22 (2014, 35), many of the young female comics artists have expressed themselves. Besides the already mentioned ZUZU and Fumettibrutti, among the fumettiste interviewed, for example, Cecilia Valagussa worked for her master’s project on her own experience living abroad in P.I.G.S. (published in Dutch in 2016 by VOS Stripgilde uitgeverij), Cristina Portolano in 2017 in Non so chi sei [I Don’t Know Who You Are] told about her sexual experience using dating apps, Sara Menetti started in 2018 her Pregnancy Comic Journal as a weekly, personal diary published online to reprocess her motherhood experience. “The need to express oneself” is confirmed by 15 of the interviewed artists and seems to be a generational tendency, and it is also identified by scholars as a typical element of recent graphic narratives, whether or not written by women (Chute 2010; Dejasse 2014; El Refaie 2012; Greco 2014). Autobiography appears, more generally, to be the chosen mode of post-modern culture and contemporary art, as it offers a minimal focus and authenticity, which seems a valid alternative to the grand narratives whose disingenuousness has been refused (Baetens 2004). This refusal of inauthentic narratives was a central and repeated concern of most of the artists we interviewed. Several of them claimed that addressing personal problems or narratives must always make sense and be relevant to the reader. In other words, personal memory—past and present—needs to serve the collective memory, which confirms one of the stereotypes Jan Baetens mentions in his study on autobiographical comics: it seems that an autobiographical comic is judged badly when it only relies on the narcissism of the creator presented as a hero rather than as an anti-hero (Baetens 2004). Some Italian scholars mimic this judgement in their reactions against what they feel to be egocentrism. 23 Notwithstanding one artist’s claim that comics as a medium seem to be “inherently auto-exhibitionist,” autobiographical graphic narratives are probably so frequent because they are encouraged by the web and social media, as Tosti states (2016, 695). Based on the success of blogs and diaries of authors such as Guy Delisle or Zerocalcare, artists like Giulia Sagramola were able to turn their blog into a published volume, in her case Milk and Mint (2008). What is interesting about this evolution is that it reveals the ambiguous nature of autobiographies as “authentic” narratives: as Daniele Barbieri states on the back cover of Milk and Mint, literature in blogs plays on this ambiguous nature of private-public, pretending to speak in the mirror of the diary while speaking in the arena of the public.

158  Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele Two artists argued that this autobiographical tendency might be linked to a sense of loneliness which they feel to be the root of their personal explorations. For others, these autobiographies are rather intended as autofiction as comics are a pliable way to draw characters that “can live things that the author did not experience or would never do.” These “indirect autobiographies”24 work on another level than would a simple diary as characters live through experiences of the author in a different time or space. As Baetens states, then, autobiography is subordinate to the logic and the rules of the work-in-progress as the artist invents a way to formally translate “autobiographèmes” (Baetens 2004). On the one hand, following Bakhtin, this is linked to the genre being built on the dialogue between the reader and the first-person narrator, who is necessarily different from the protagonist or author of the story (Greco 2014, 231). On the other hand, this intricacy arises from the medium itself, as comics complicate the notion of narrator. Not only is there a split between verbal and graphic narrator—Philippe Marion termed this the graphiateur—but the autobiographical can also be expressed in the formal or stylistic rather than in the narrative—even in the case of a “complete author,” i.e., when writer and artist coincide (Baetens 2004). An example of this could be Malibu (2019) by Eliana Albertini: thanks to a vivid representation of the Venetian Province of Polesine where the artist lives—and to its particular style, this work could be defined as autobiographical even though she does not represent herself (see Figure 10.3). To avoid labels like “egocentric” or “untruthful,” some artists link their private stories to the sociocultural background of their generation. They focus on the political, ethical possibilities of committed and engaged 25 feminist autobiography, waging small or big battles of women, from body acceptance to gender equality, freedom, and reflection on society. In mainstream publishing, this political stance is evident from the anthology Post Pink.26 Other artists use autobiography as an authentic starting point to build bridges, spontaneous connections with an empathetic reader, as emotions are universally recognizable.27 Invoking what Greimas has termed “recognition” (1983, cited in Greco 2014, 148), a contract is established with the reader who accepts to believe what the intradiegetic narrator tells and shows, even though throughout the narration this dialogue can cause both trust and suspicion. As comics are a multi-modal medium, both the text and the image can cause either trust or possible suspect (Greco 2014, 200). Apart from an abundant number of autobiographies, there is, however, also a clear interest—from the makers, the publishers, and the readers—in biographies. The draw on realism and non-fiction is evident from the following examples. Cecilia Valagussa worked on the link between artists and World War I in Colore inferno [Colour Hell]; Eliana Albertini turned the life of Luigi Meneghello into comics; Silvia Rocchi did the same for Tiziano Terzani and Alda Merini; Alice Milani narrated Marie Curie, Wisława Szymborska and Don Milani’s lives; Cristina Portolano made the comics biography in French Francis Bacon: la violence d’une rose. Many of these non-fictional works were commissioned, by publishing or NGO, such as Alice Socal’s Pink Donkeys, part of the project “Redrawing Stories from the Past: Escape and Migration in

Precarious Identity 159

Figure 10.3  “There is nothing to do.” Source: Excerpt from Malibu by Eliana Albertini (BeccoGiallo, 2019).

Europe.” These young women’s graphic narratives thus conquer a central position in the translation of documentary sources and valorization of knowledge gained from archives and memory (Greco 2014, 265). The final intention of these works is the same as that of the autobiographies: to satisfy the essential need for knowledge, reaching out to a heterogeneous audience by stimulating its feelings (Greco 2014, 266).

160  Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele Still, this production does not necessarily avoid all genres that are not (auto) biographical. As the anthology Materia Degenere has shown, the editorial politics of alternative publishers do not necessarily forbid genres but rather oppose their traditional use (Dejasse 2014, 37). Under the coordination of Marco Galli, Diabolo Edizioni gave young women artists Federica Bellomi, Fumettibrutti, Roberta “Joe1” Muci, Elena Pagliani and Monica Rossi the chance to publish short stories in different genres: western, thriller, noir, science fiction. The experiment has been repeated with Tuono Pettinato and Matteo Contin guiding Upáta, Louseen Smith, Roberta Scomparsa, Nova and Ferraglia.

Analyzing the format: Self-publishing From our questionnaire, we learned that the majority of these women artists have produced comics independently through self-publishing: in fanzines (5), anthologies (10) or in other formats (5). This choice is not surprising and was one of the elements we identified in this generation’s efforts to construct their own audience. A practice that involves dealing with the entire comics production process, 28 the production and the publication of DIY comics increased even more in recent years, thanks to technical and cultural factors: easier access to digital layout, economic online digital printing, a growing number of comics schools, and a surge of independent comics festivals. Thanks to these factors, our selected artists were able to work as creators and as editors or organizers of (underground or alternative) festivals by themselves or with their own labels. Analyzing the answers to our survey and the self-publishing scenario, we can discern some reasons why this generation decides to invest their energies in DIY comics. Some fumettiste use it to prove themselves during their formative years or to receive payment for their comics. By exposing their art—illustrations and comics—in specialized festivals, they can draw the publishers’ attention, without going through portfolio reviews.29 Actually, since Zerocalcare’s boom, mainstream publishers are acting as talent scouts, visiting DIY comics events and festivals to discover new authors.30 From this perspective, self-publishing is seen as an essential stage in their career. In addition to these formative reasons, we can find two more socially related motives. First, self-publishing can be an ethical-political choice. As Roberta “Joe1” Muci responded in our survey, making DIY comics, becoming involved in festival organizations or fanzines and the production of illustrations is a form of creative resistance. Second, these fumettiste express the desire to compare themselves with same-aged artists, creating a network through schools, events, festivals, social networks, leading to collective projects—self-publishing groups or anthologies. Many of these women have established relevant collectives such as La Trama (Francesca Lanzarini, Alice Milani, Viola Niccolai, Silvia Rocchi), active from 2009 to 2015 with a focus on realistic stories and mixed techniques—drawings, painting, woodcut printing.31 For Attaccapanni Press (Laura Guglielmo, Ariel Vittori, formerly with Laura Vivacqua), established in 2016, self-publishing is a way to search for talent in order to write and draw comics together. As they are specialized in

Precarious Identity 161 anthologies, they reunite illustrators and comics artists around thematic projects, such as eroticism or witchcraft, launching their DIY projects through crowdfunding.32 Another similarity of these artists is that they work at the intersection between online platforms—blogs, websites, and social networks: Facebook and Instagram—and traditional publishing—DIY or mainstream—promoting their works across multiple platforms, online and offline. See, for example, Sara Menetti from Associazione Culturale Mammaiuto, whose online Pregnancy Comic Journal was later collected in a DIY volume and in a Feltrinelli Comics’ book. “How precarious is your job?” was a question we included in our survey because of the results of a previous research into “comics Jobs” by Mestieri del Fumetto (hence MeFu).33 According to MeFu’s data more than 61.5% of Italian comics creators make less than 5,000 euros annual profit. We were interested to know whether young women artists handle that form of precarity. The majority of these artists indicated they felt insecure (20), either purely economic (10), or as a combination of financial and professional insecurity (10). None of the artists linked precarity to their gender but blamed the kind of job they perform. With the job comes a publishing market that “does not work very well” and within which it is “a constant struggle to be taken seriously professionally.” Others assert their projects are “not taken into consideration easily” and the subsequent payments are said to be “belated” or with low fees. That is why many of them make an additional living in other artistic fields, such as in illustration, craftsmanship (7),34 graphic design or fine art prints—such as silk-screen printing—animation, game development or educational publishing. Although one artist addressed the poor revenue gained out of these extra activities, it is clear that these supplementary occupations are both an interest and a necessity. To ensure a regular income, some even count on functioning in other markets or fields such as working as a curator for art galleries and museums, or in education.

Conclusions To conclude, and combining our observations with the survey, we argue these young fumettiste claim to be making Italian comics while their output reflects a larger international scene that mostly occupies alternative markets. Self-identity as a comics artist and within the comics has dominated the discourse. We have signalled their generic preference for (auto)biography as a means of reaching out to a public or to make a reading that is thought to be worthwhile. In an attempt to gain readers and (scholarly) attention or to act as activists or express themselves, these artists have joined collectives. Notwithstanding the growing attention for these collectives or individual artistic endeavours, their current occupations do not provide most of them with a liveable income. Contemporaneously, many of these young women still produce DIY comics, in an attempt to express their identity, maintaining a delicate balance between the self and the collective, the mainstream and the alternative. Their eclectic output merits the attention of an international audience, and a scholarship that can start doing comparative research on young (women) artists in Europe and beyond. We hope our chapter is a first step towards this research.

162  Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato and Eva Van de Wiele

Notes 1. Shōjo manga is Japanese comics aimed at a teen female target audience (ages 10–18). In Italy, their publication exploded precisely in the 1990s as a result of the anime boom in the country. See Pellitteri (2008). 2. Zerocalcare (Michele Rech, 1983) is formed in the self-publishing scenario, gaining enormous success with his comics blog and with La profezia dell’armadillo (Bao Publishing edition, 2012) which currently has sold around 100,000 copies. 3. ZUZU (Giulia Spagnulo, 1996), the comic artist and illustrator, drew critical and public attention with Cheese (Coconino Press, 2019), where she addresses issues such as friendship and anorexia. 4. Fumettibrutti (Josephine Yole Signorelli, 1991) is a comic artist with a huge popularity on social medias, also for her feminism and LGBT activism (she identifies herself as a transwoman). Besides Romanzo Esplicito, she also published P. La mia adolescenza trans (2019) and Anestesia (2020), always for Feltrinelli Comics. 5. Since 2017, Coconino Press has been directed by Ratigher, an independent author renowned for his self-publishing books. Feltrinelli Comics is the comics series of Feltrinelli, the leading Italian publisher. Started in 2017, it is led since the beginning by the screenwriter Tito Faraci. 6. See Luca Valtorta’s article “Il corpo è mio il disegno pure,” il Venerdì di Repubblica, April 16, 2021. 7. As explained by Cristina Greco, there has been a recent rediscovery of autobiography, thanks to comics artists and comics publishers’ focus on public figures and ordinary life stories (Greco 2014, 19). 8. About blog BD, see “Le temps des réseaux sociaux, ou la formation de la blogosphère” by Julien Baudry in Robert (2019). In Italy the blogosphère arrived a few years later than in France: for example, Giulia Sagramola opened her blog in 2010, Associazione Culturale Mammaiuto and Zerocalcare in 2011, Loputyn in 2013. 9. The transition from active research of artists on blogs/websites to a more passive exploration on social networks leads to a greater, popular access for non-comics readers. 10. As opposed to recent anthologies of Italian cartoonists that focus on established, male and female artists born around 1960, such as Giovanni Russo’s Cartaditalia. 11. The artists that replied all the questions were Eliana Albertini, Bianca Bagnarelli, Flavia Biondi, Laura Camelli “La Came,” Veronica Veci Carratello, Laura Guglielmo, Roberta “Joe1” Muci, Jessica Cioffi “Loputyn,” Elisa Macellari, Giorgia Marras, Sara Menetti, Elisa Menini, Alice Milani, Margherita Morotti, Kalina Hristova Muhova, Alessandra De Santis “Nova,” Cristina Portolano, Silvia Rocchi, Giulia Sagramola, Margherita Tramutoli “la Tram,” Cecilia Valagussa. 12. See the recent statistics published by Istat Istituto Nazionale di Statistica on February 1, 2021: https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/253019. 13. Fumetto is the Italian word for “balloon” (also nuvoletta), a “fundamental element of comics’ semantics” referring either to speech or thought of the characters (Eco 2016, 146–147), so evident a characteristic it was used in Italy to name the medium itself (Brancato 2000, 30). Luca Boschi indicates that the term “fumetti” was introduced a bit before the birth of the magazine Linus, at the beginning of the 1960s. He refers to the publication of Carlo Della Corte’s book I fumetti by Mondadori in 1961 (Boschi 2010). 14. For example, Giorgia Marras, who works primarily in France, opts for bande dessinée or roman graphique. 15. The course started in 2004 within the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, is the first cycle degree on comics and illustration within the Italian artistic academies. 16. Others were named once: Barbara Baldi, Paolo Bacilieri, Andrea Pazienza, Francesco Cattani, Andrea Accardi, Lorenzo Mattotti, Grazia Nidasio, Igort, Lorena Canottiere, Sara Pichelli, Giacomo Nanni, Grazia La Padula. Between them, also Francesco Cattani, Sara Pichelli and Grazia La Padula born after 1980.

Precarious Identity 163 17. Mondo Naif was first a comics miniseries (1996), then an anthological magazine (1998–2005), published by Kappa Edizioni and curated by Kappa Boys (Andrea Baricordi, Massimiliano De Giovanni, Barbara Rossi). The idea was to promote young Italian comics artists, such as Vanna Vinci, Davide Toffolo, Otto Gabos, Sara Colaone, Keiko Ichiguchi. 18. The materials they declare to use include pencil on paper, ink and digital colouring, acryl, gouache, watercolor, tempera and Ecoline liquid watercolors. 19. Tosti talks about the “overproduction” (Tosti 2016, 699) of autobiographies, indicating that it is, nevertheless, a relatively “new” genre within graphic narratives: Tosti claims Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary (1972) to be one of its pioneers, as artists such as Robert Crumb or Art Spiegelman claimed it to having been their inspiration. Elisabeth El Refaie also refers to the commercial success of (auto)biographical comics: “publishers and authors continue to refer to autobiography/memoir as a separate genre, partly perhaps in order to cash in on its popularity. As the healthy sales figures of celebrity memoirs, in particular, clearly show the public’s appetite for ‘true’ stories of ‘real’ lives has apparently not abated at all; if anything, it seems to have increased over the last few decades” (El Refaie 2012, 17). 20. See Luca Valtorta’s article “Il corpo è mio il disegno pure,” il Venerdì di Repubblica, April 16, 2021. 21. Moleste is a feminist collective, established in 2020 by a group of women authors that had the necessity to share abuse experiences or sexist discrimination in the Italian comics industry. 22. According to Dejasse, if alternative comics are always associated with the graphic novel, their inevitable assimilation to the autobiographical “genre” constitutes another commonplace. 23. Scrivo calls it a serious mistake to turn one’s work into a social wall on which to pour out “one’s own business” with proud exhibitionism (Bonomi et al. 2020, 163). Tosti finds these autobiographical comics immersions in the lives of the authors, not devoid of voyeurism and egocentrism (2016, 694). 24. Term used by Giorgia Marras, in answer to our survey question “Why do you feel the need to express yourself in your work?” 25. Such as political and social topics, or comics that exemplify dignity, the defence of people’s rights, and rebellion against injustice and madness. 26. Nine young artists were involved: Fumettibrutti, la Tram, Sara Menetti, Alice Milani, Margherita Morotti, Sara Pavan, Cristina Portolano, Silvia Rocchi, Alice Socal. 27. One artist claims to prefer to treat current topics or that have roots in reality, such as reportage, training, education, and intimate stories. 28. Creation, development, physical realization, promotion and distribution of a product via direct sales in festivals, events, online shops, and specialist bookstores. 29. See the assertions by Alessandro Baronciani (Pavan 2014, 31) and Francesco Cattani (Pavan 2014, 78). Giorgia Marras confirmed this reason too (online interview, March 30, 2021). 30. Browsing through the catalogues of Bao Publishing or BeccoGiallo Editore one can trace most of the artists we mentioned. 31. La Trama produced several monographic publications: above all, we recall the series Coppie miste (2013–2015), composed of albums, each of which was written and drawn by artists. 32. Launching a publication through a crowdfunding campaign allows the collective to organize promotions and estimate the number of issues for printing better. Attaccapanni Press has been using this system since their first Grimorio anthology (2016). 33. MeFu’s research is available at https://www.mefu.it/indagine/. 34. Some craftmanship examples are tailoring, pottery, embroidery (Kalina Muhova, Bulgarian illustrator and comics creator that has lived and worked in Bologna since 2013), pillow-toys (Giulia Sagramola), t-shirts and pins (Eliana Albertini).

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References Albertini, Eliana. 2019. Malibu. Padova: BeccoGiallo. Baetens, Jan. 2004. “Bande dessinée et autobiographie: Problèmes, enjeux, exemples”. In Belphégor: Littérature Populaire et Culture Médiatique, 4.1. https://dalspace.library. dal.ca/handle/10222/47689 Bonomi, Giuseppe, Claudio Gallo, Laura Scarpa, Nicola Spagnolli and Ingrid Zenari, eds. 2020. Qua la penna! Autrici e art director nel fumetto italiano (1908–2018). Roma: Comicout—Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati. Boschi, Luca. 2010. “Ancora sull’origine del termine fumetto”. In Cartoonist Globale. https://lucaboschi.nova100.ilsole24ore.com/2010/06/29/ancora-sullorigine-deltermine-fumetto/ Brancato, Sergio. 2000. Fumetti: guida ai comics nel sistema dei media. Roma: Datanews. Chute, Hillary L. 2010. Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. Gender and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Dallavalle, Sara. 2020. “Alcuni dati sull’andamento dell’editoria fumettistica in Italia tra graphic novel e fumetto seriale.” Simultanea 1(2) Fall. http://italianpopculture.org/alcuni-dati-sullandamento-delleditoria-fumettistica-in-italia-tra-graphic-novel-e-fumettoseriale/ Dejasse, Erwin. 2014. “Le regard cosmopolite et retrospectif de la bande dessinée alternative.” In Christophe Dony, Gert Meesters and Tanguy Habrand, eds. La bande dessinée en dissidence. Alternative, indépendance, auto-édition. Comics in Dissent. Alternative, Independence, Self-Publishing. Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège. El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2012. Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Greco, Cristina. 2014. Graphic novel: confini e forme inedite nel sistema attuale dei generi. Roma: Edizioni Nuova Cultura. Menu, Jean-Christophe. 1999. Comix 2000. Paris: L’Association. Pavan, Sara. 2014. Il potere sovversivo della carta. Dieci anni di fumetti autoprodotti in Italia. Milano: Agenzia X. Pellitteri, Marco. 2008. Il drago e la saetta. Modelli, strategie e identità dell’immaginario giapponese. Latina: Tunué. Robert, Pascal. 2019. Bande Dessinée et Numérique. Nouvelle édition en ligne. Paris: CNRS Éditions. Russo, Giovanni. 2018. Cartaditalia, Rivista Di Cultura Italiana Contemporanea. Bruxelles: Istituto Italiano di Cultura. Stein, Daniel, Shane Denson, Christina Meyer, eds. 2013. Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives: Comics at the Crossroads. London: Bloomsbury. Tosti, Andrea. 2016. Graphic novel: storia e teoria del romanzo a fumetti e del rapporto fra parola e immagine. Latina: Tunué.

11 Amazing Ultradeformer Cartoonist from Ituzaingó The Memes of Pedro Mancini1 Amadeo Gandolfo

Introduction Pedro Mancini is an Argentine cartoonist. His works are usually dark, nightmarish, and melancholic affairs, drawn in black and white, with an intense use of crosshatching. His characters are loners with a rich inner life who traverse between the “real world” and an oneiric landscape filled with unexplainable creatures. His influences range from William Burroughs to Genesis P-Orridge, from Grant Morrison to The Residents, from Walt Disney to Quique Alcatena. He started his career in 2006 and he has published several books: Paranoia Normal (2012), Disparo Rayos Por Los Ojos (2014), Hermano (2014), Detrás del Ruido (2018) (a “biography” of William Burroughs when he was a boy), Alien Triste (2015). He has been published in France, Switzerland, and Spain. But Pedro also has a second, more notorious life … as a maker of memes. Both his Facebook and Instagram feed are filled with absurd memes, which are liked, shared, and commented endlessly and joyously by his followers. Most speak about the precarity of life as a cartoonist in the 21st century. They romanticize and poke fun at his lack of money, his antisocial tendencies, or the fact that he cannot buy good cheese for his pasta. With time, recurring motifs have appeared: his only shirt, the concept of “Ultradeformer Comics,” the concept of “espectración” [spectration], his baldness. Soon, he started making memes about how his memes are more popular than his comics. I believe Pedro’s memes are an integral part of his presentation as an artist, and that they serve as an amusing counterpoint to the themes and styles of his comics. More than that, I believe they are a convoluted way to dialogue with the autobiographical tradition in indie comics. And that they, and this is the most important aspect, help him build a community with his audience. In this essay, I aim to question the relation between them and the position Pedro occupies as a cartoonist in 21st-century Argentina. What relationship do these memes establish with his more serious work? How is this form of humour linked to a certain author image that he constructs? Are they a means of coping with anxieties and fears? Or are they simply comical? What happens when a great deal of what brings together an artist and his public is considered unpublishable ephemera? DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-16

166  Amadeo Gandolfo

An elusive yet omnipresent object: Defining memes To start with, I must define what I mean by memes. The term has a notorious history, starting with the coinage of the concept by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene (Dawkins 2016). Dawkins was concerned with finding a cultural analogy to the gene, trying to understand how cultural units of information spread and survive. For Dawkins, memes are “small cultural units of transmission, analogous to genes, that spread from person to person by copying or imitation” (Shifman 2015, 9). The concept was then developed into a comprehensive field of research with its own controversies and issues. There are two major questions concerning memes. Firstly, the definition of how vast a unit of information is a meme. For Dawkins, memes can be as small as a song lyric and as vast as the concept of democracy. What defines them is their ability to replicate themselves from person to person and to survive as long as possible. The second big quandary is the level of agency that humans have when disseminating them. Susan Blackmore, in The Meme Machine (2000), posits that “people are merely devices operated by the numerous memes they host and constantly spread” (Shifman 2015, 12). On the other hand, Limor Shifman considers that human agency is fundamental for the spread of memes. This position is also defended by Bradley E. Wiggings, who positions memes as a “genre of communication, not a unit of cultural transmission” and considers them not as a mimeme (that is, as a unit that is replicated and imitated) but as enthymemes: “a digital phenomenon marked not by imitation but by the capacity to propose or counter a discursive argument through visual and often also verbal interplay” (Wiggins 2019, 1). Both Shifman and Wiggings aim to expand the definition of memes offered by Dawkins to include Internet memes, which are qualitatively different from what he envisioned. Shifman proposes that Internet memes have the following characteristics: “1) a gradual propagation from individuals to society, 2) reproduction via copying and imitation, and 3) diffusion through competition and selection” (2015, 18). She identifies three characteristics in the composition of a meme: content, form, and stance. The first refers to the ideas that it conveys, the second to the way it conveys them, and the third to the way the person who makes or shares the meme positions himself or herself “in relation to the text, its linguistic codes, the addressees, and other potential speakers” (Shifman 2015, 40). She then breaks down the stance into three subdimensions: (1) participation structures: who can participate in the exchange and how, (2) keying—the tone of the communication, and (3) communicative functions, following Roman Jakobson: referential, emotive, conative, phatic, metalingual, and poetic. She then defines Internet memes as: “a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance which b) were created with awareness of each other and c) were circulated, imitated and/or transformed via the Internet by many users” (Shifman 2015, 41). Wiggins elaborates on this typology by making stance a more complex part of memetic production. He proposes that, when it comes to image-based memes (which will be the ones I will be addressing here), stance must incorporate two other

The Memes of Pedro Mancini 167 dimensions: semiotics and intertextuality: “a semiotic elaboration within stance means that the role of metaphor, metonymy, juxtaposition, bricolage, pastiche, synecdoche, etc. is asserted due to the lack of human speech. (…) Intertextuality resides in stance due to the discursive function inherent in the remixing of image and referents for meaning making” (2019, 17). But Wiggins goes one step further and proposes that Internet memes always enact some sort of ideological stance, always have something to say regarding the state of the world they are commenting upon: “any given meme inheres ideological practice (…) Additionally, in order for the ideology to be understood, certain semiotic constructions must be achieved for meaning to be consolidated in an enthymematic process that occurs between an individual or groups of individuals and a given internet meme” (2019, 24–25). This will be the position I adopt in this chapter. I will aim to answer which ideological stance regarding comics-making and its pitfalls Mancini adheres to, and what his memes have to say about the difficulties and precarities of being a comic book artist.

Portrait of the artist as a young hobo Mancini started making memes in 2017. He first started adapting famous memes templates to feature his most famous character, Alien Triste (“Sad Alien”). Among them, he adapted “Drakeposting” and “Batman Slapping Robin.” Differently from the memes he would produce afterwards, these ones were re-drawings rather than remixes. Soon after, Mancini started taking noteworthy meme templates and adding his photoshopped face. The first ones made fun of the fact that he “walked like Alf,” the lovable extra-terrestrial from the 1980s. This caused him to be uncool and old. Towards April of 2018, Mancini started making memes in which he made fun of the fact that he only owns one shirt. For example, taking a screenshot from The Simpsons in which Homer is expelled from a Treehouse because it is a “No Homers Club,” Mancini pastes Quino’s head over the bouncer at the door and his own face over Homer. Quino says: “We don’t admit cartoonists who own only one shirt” (Mancini 2018b). In another one, a foetus says he wants to be a fanzine maker and his mother cries (Mancini 2018a). This meme was related to the debate around legal abortion in Argentina: the opposition to said bill had created a mascot that was a “foetus who wanted to be an engineer.” Something they could, obviously, not do if their mother had an abortion. However, it was in June 2018 that Mancini started a series of thematic memes that would become his trademark. They dealt with the fact that he did not have enough money to buy quality grated cheese for his pasta. As a struggling author and cartoonist, he only had money for the cheapest and most unsavoury cheese (Mancini 2018c). To this, he added a series of memes and Facebook updates about how he was turning bald. All of these features converged in a meme in which he presented the “Ultradeformer starter pack.” “Ultradeformer” is a concept that Mancini coined to define the comics he makes. It implies that his comics are deformed, hard to decipher and understand, due to its dreamlike and

168  Amadeo Gandolfo personal iconography. At the same time, it also refers to the fact that (at least in the author’s own perception) they are not commercially viable, too obscure and weird for the common reader. Mancini took an already existing meme template: the “Starter Packs Memes.” These present a group of items that presumably characterize a subculture or stereotype as a way to ridicule them. The one Mancini made included one shirt, a can of mincemeat, a rat, a Pizzini stylus, a balding head, the worst grated cheese available in Argentina, a billboard from the Conurbano that showed a sausage with a collar, a noise record and the head of a fish (Mancini 2018d). Some of these items alluded to poverty, others to aging and others to his work and his cultural taste. But all of them were, for his audience, easily distinguishable markers of a caricature of himself that Pedro constructed through repetition and remix, with a humorous tone, as a way to get likes, but also as a way to build community and communication with a public that, more often than not, also see themselves reflected in his “plight” (see Figure 11.1).

Figure 11.1  Mancini shows his audience what is necessary to become like him.

The Memes of Pedro Mancini 169 During the second half of 2018 and the first half of 2019, Mancini, however, won a scholarship to spend a year in Paris drawing his second graphic novel, Niño Oruga, which is an oneiric retelling of his relationship with his grandfather. With his financial situation stabilized, Mancini turned to memes that spoke about his alienation and isolation in Paris. One of them shows his disgusted face next to the phrase “Travelling to a distant country to stimulate myself and thus create great artistic work” and also next to “Travelling to a distant country to make connections with important persons from the comics world.” The third tier is a collage of Mancini’s head over Mr. Burns disguised as Jimbo Jones2 approving of the following: “Travelling to a distant country to continue to make memes about grated cheese.” Another shows two pictures of his face pasted over a homeless person: one in Buenos Aires, the other in Paris. The only difference is that in Paris, he has a baguette, a few pieces of cheese and a bottle of wine (Mancini 2018e) (see Figure 11.2). He also started making fun of the social differences between Conurbano and Paris. In one meme, the caption reads: “Yes, my European friends, I will tell the people of Ituzaingó about the climatological and ecological problems that lie in wait for the planet.” Below this, a caption

Figure 11.2  The cartoonist’s life remains mostly the same in Buenos Aires or Paris.

170  Amadeo Gandolfo reads “In Ituzaingó:” and a collage where we see a street corner with two 16-bit characters about to embark in a fight and a giant rat, thus implying that inhabitants of Ituzaingó have different concerns (Mancini 2019a). A brief note about the Conurbano of Buenos Aires: the Argentinean equivalent of “la banlieue” of Paris, the Conurbano is a diverse and sprawling collection of neighbourhoods that surround the City of Buenos Aires itself. In said space, which is divided in “rings” (first, second and third ring, according to their proximity to the city), one can find affluent neighbourhoods such as San Isidro, and poor ones, such as Moreno. The Conurbano has also a rich and mythic imagery, which presents it as a place inhabited by working-class people who are more “authentic” and have a richer culture than those of the City of Buenos Aires. Another trait that is usually underlined is the sacrifices made and the difficulties endured by many people living there, which does not prevent them from having fun or partying. Several music movements have come out of this space, as well as several cartoonists. It is also a place that is intensely associated with the Peronist movement, which usually wins elections here by a wide margin. As a consequence, those who oppose Peronism in political and cultural terms usually see the Conurbano as a wild and decadent place, which shames them with their barbaric ways and distances Argentina from their unstated example: Europe. It is all these topics that Mancini touches upon with this meme. In mid-2019, when the time to return to Argentina started looming, Mancini went back to his memes about the dire prospects of being an independent cartoonist. One of them, actually a drawing, depicts Alien Triste laying down in an alleyway tormented by ghosts and dead rats who have the labels “Future work perspectives as a comic artist” and “Enthusiasm for life” (Mancini 2019b). Another one, employing the Woman Yelling at a Cat template, shows her yelling at Mancini: “You told me that ultradeformer comics were one of the most transcendent artistic movements of this century and it’s you drawing comics in slippers in your home!” (Mancini 2019c). A third one employs the “Because Your Mother Loves Roses” meme template: —Dad, why is my sister called Celeste? —Because your mom loves that colour. —Thanks, dad. —You’re welcome, Drawing Comics and Living in Indigence. (Mancini 2019d) Mancini continues here a line of romanticization of the work of the cartoonist, which employs self-deprecation and honesty rather than aggrandization. This “tradition” courses through underground and indie comics since its inception. Robert Crumb, Joe Matt, Seth, Julie Doucet, and a myriad of artists have tapped into this well. Speaking with candour and honesty about their tribulations, these artists also construct their own mythology, and aestheticize their struggles. Charles Hatfield, in his seminal Alternative Comics, put it this way when talking about Harvey Pekar:

The Memes of Pedro Mancini 171 Pekar has succeeded in mythologizing himself, transforming “Harvey” into a property that belongs to him (or he to it?) but which nonetheless exceeds him. By turns gregarious and recessive, openhearted and suspicious, sensitive and coarse, the workingclass hero of American Splendor emerges as a complex, provoking character who just happens to bear an unmistakable likeness to his creator. (2005, 109) In addition, analyzing works by Daniel Clowes, Robert Crumb and Gilbert Hernandez, which wilfully obscure and destabilize the authenticity of the narrator persona and what happens to them, Hatfield coins the term “ironic authentication”: “the implicit reinforcement of truth claims through their explicit rejection. In brief, ironic authentication makes a show of honesty by denying the very possibility of being honest” (Hatfield 2005, 125–126). Jared Gardner has made similar claims when he mentions that: With comics, the compressed, mediated, and iconic nature of the testimony (both text and image) denies any collapse between autobiography and autobiographical subject (the frequent use of pseudonyms or caricatures only reinforces the split), and the stylized comic art refuses any claims to the “having-been-there” truth. (2008, 12) As Elisabeth El Refaie argues, reading autobiographical comics implies both involvement—“the general sense of connection individual readers feel either with a whole narrative or with particular scenes or character in it” (2016, 181)— and affiliation—“an emotional bond with readers so that they see the world, at least momentarily, from the perspective of the autobiographical protagonist” (182). To engage readers in both processes, authors employ a series of rhetorical strategies. Among them, humour. El Refaie stresses the importance of self-deprecating humour in autobiographical comics: “[it] has become such an expected feature of the graphic memoir genre that individual artists who diverge from this convention run the risk of being perceived as pompous or self-satisfied and of losing the reader’s sympathy” (2016, 213). Mancini knows we know that he does not live in a basement and eats cans of mincemeat and heads of fish. He knows we are well aware of his increasingly recognized oeuvre. But he constructs an image of himself that is purposefully ironic and exaggerated, thus engaging with his audience in the manner that Gardner describes of autobiographical comics: “the most personal stories became the ones that forged the most meaningful connections with others, opening up a dialogue with audiences and a sense of communal experience and release” (Gardner 2008, 13). To finish, I would like to dwell on a concept that Mancini developed during 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Mancini spent the long quarantine from March to November of 2020 in his home in Ituzaingó, finishing Niño Oruga. During this year, he took primarily to Instagram to connect with his audience,

172  Amadeo Gandolfo pass the time and relieve boredom. He continued posting memes on Facebook, but his main output moved to Instagram.3 There, he would log in late at night and post pictures, memes, songs, and polls for his followers to interact with, while he drew and drank wine. He found a way to share his bohemia with his followers and to make them participate in his production process, which involved listening to a vast array of music until the morning. Eventually, he started to call these long nights “espectración,” which means “spectration.” Though he never properly defined what “spectration” means, all evidence points to nights during which, through the use of a combination of intoxicating substances, weird music, and influences such as William Burroughs and The Residents, Mancini can liberate higher functions of the brain, inducing hallucination, phantasmagoria, and the creative act. He sometimes talks about invoking the “Iridescent Crustacean God.” At the same time, there is a humorous acknowledgement that “spectration” is simply Mancini drinking wine alone at home and trying to connect with his readers through social networks. This is reflected precisely in a meme that employs, once again, the “Woman Yelling” template. She yells: “You told me that spectration was the door to a new way of understanding the universe and it’s you drinking wine and listening to Cabaret Voltaire” (Mancini 2020b) (see Figure 11.3).

Figure 11.3  The myth and reality of “spectration.”

The Memes of Pedro Mancini 173

God bless Pedro Mancini and all who sail with him In February 2021, Mancini finally finished Niño Oruga. Soon after, he started uploading memes about how his audience was more interested in his memes than in a comic that he had been drawing for the past three years (Mancini 2020a). Something that had started as a way to poke fun at his own situation as a creator had metamorphosed into its own raison d’etre for a large chunk of his audience. This brings me back to the original questions that opened this chapter. Mancini, through his memes, composes an image of a creator in perpetual struggle and precarity. But, at the same time, through his use of humour, he also establishes a connection with his audience in which it is implied that things are not as terrible as they seem, since he still has the capacity to laugh at himself and his predicament. His memes are a means to build a particular and carefully composed image of the artist. They are, in a way, a form of self-promotion through self-deprecation. The number of reactions and favs that Mancini started getting due to memes prove this.4 He also noticed this, which expressed itself in the making of new memes and the recognition that they are a large part of his appeal on social networks. As stated above, the memes poke fun at his way of walking, his baldness, his poverty, and his job insecurity. They present him as uncool, old, poor, and pathetic. But, at the same time, Mancini is a relatively well-known Argentine cartoonist. He has actually succeeded in turning comics into his career. He participates in the local comics scene and has contacts in Europe. He even lived in Paris with a scholarship for making comics. As such, these memes and the image of the artist they fabricate are romantic exaggerations. They help build a certain image of the artist for, let’s say, poetic purposes. Nevertheless, there is a part that is undeniably true: it is impossible, in Argentina, in 2021, to have a steady income as a consequence of being a comic book artist. This is not the same as having a career as a cartoonist. There are simply not enough magazines where to publish, and work on long graphic novels is difficult, time-consuming and slow. Mancini was supposed to finish Niño Oruga by mid-2019, hence the long stream of memes that poke fun at his slowness. Working as an illustrator or giving workshops on comics making certainly helps, but it is not enough. This is a situation that is common to many, if not all, Argentine cartoonists. Most of them live this life, which requires ingenuity when making ends meet: a regular 9 to 5 job, freelancing in illustration or storyboards, giving classes, taking commissions, or producing merchandising that is sold at fairs or through the Internet. The comics industry in Argentina is large enough to produce a reasonable number of artists and books, but not large enough to have regularly published titles that pay artists for their work, or to sell books in insanely high numbers. A number of them live mostly off his cartooning output, but in these cases, there is a strong link with foreign markets, be it European (mostly French) ones or North American. This is the case with Lucas Varela, Diego Agrimbau,5 Juan Saenz Valiente (working for the French market); and of Eduardo Risso, Luciano Vecchio or Max Fiumara (working for the North American market). In a previous text, I described the comics scene in Argentina

174  Amadeo Gandolfo as based on “enthusiasm and socialization” (Gandolfo 2020) and Pedro’s memes are definitely a part of that socialization and also of that enthusiasm. In this regard, Mancini’s memes are, as Shifman points out, a group of digital items who share a common stance, form, and content. They are all image-based memes who employ several popular meme templates (form), and they all communicate the same content: being a comic book creator is a thankless job that leads to poverty. With regards to stance, it is clear that the memes are intended to be shared and experienced by Mancini’s usual audience, the people who read his comics, but also many people who appreciate his humour and became fans of Mancini thanks to his memes. They employ, predominantly, the emotive function of language. As Bradley Wiggins points out, these memes have an ideological stance and are part of an enthymematic process: that late-stage capitalism is particularly harsh and unforgiving for those who work inside the creative industries, and especially in comics. This ideological stance is shared between creator and audience, who identify themselves with the plight of Pedro (when said audience is composed of other cartoonists) or are aware of the difficulties involved in comics making because they are readers or fans. Or because they too, are victims of late-stage capitalism, toiling away in badly paid jobs. But there is one difference with Shifman’s definition: whenever people share Mancini’s memes, they share them untouched, as if they were an artistic piece, the endpoint of a particular meme template. I believe this is so because something of the aura of the artist is still attached to them. Which is rather paradoxical since memes would have been Walter Benjamin’s nightmare. For him, what is paramount is authenticity, since “the authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced” (Benjamin 2007, 221). Memes are opposite to all that: infinitely reproducible, anonymous, made for massive consumption, with no trace of an original whatsoever. However, I would like to contend that Mancini, as Hatfield explains, is performing authenticity through these memes, and that his audiences respond to his authenticity as a creator-character, and not to the situated authenticity of the “work of art.” Wiggings, in fact, employs a chapter of his book discussing the possibility of memes being art. He compares them to dadaism and surrealism and finds that strategies such as collage, juxtaposition, reinterpretation of images and readymade employed by these avant-garde art movements are also deployed by memes. He also finds common ground on their stance: ironic, detached and aiming to banish boundaries between art and non-art (Wiggins 2019, 130–152). However, one of the defining characteristics of memes is their anonymity. This is a consequence of the collaborative and chaotic way in which they are produced and spread, in message boards and social networks where anonymity is a large part of the equation. This is picked up by contemporary artist and prankster Brad Troemel in a visual essay called Repetition Mindset, posted on his Instagram account. There, he argues that memes are a superior form of contemporary art. In his view, contemporary art is based on the repetition of a style or technique to the point of saturation, the referentiality to other

The Memes of Pedro Mancini 175 works in the history of art, scarcity, a cryptic message that has to be explained in a text that is attached to the work, individualism, and a market composed by millionaire buyers and marchands, thus making works of art unattainable for the public. Meanwhile, Troemel argues, memes are based in a culture that privileges response, like a game, therefore they are collaborative, therefore they are infinitely mutable, they are aimed at the general public, they are easily understandable, they are plentiful and anyone can access them (Troemel 2020). How do these characteristics relate to the memes of Pedro Mancini? In a paradoxical way: Mancini’s memes are artist’s memes, something that is also underlined by the fact that his face appears in many of them. They speak to universal anxieties and fears of cartoonists, but they do it through personal references, which are not easily remixable or adaptable. I believe this is why Pedro’s memes are popular but not necessarily spreadable in the way traditional memes are. They prove that memes can be a certain type of art (or be linked to the artistic output of a particular creator), but in doing so, they might lose something that makes them memes and become “contaminated” by the discourse of art. What Mancini’s memes illustrate is the possibility of being a comic book artist with a certain position within the scene, but that recognition is not enough to become a professional, as in living entirely off his output. This is due to structural conditions pertaining to the comic industry in Argentina, which produces a fair amount of output but lacks the number of publishing houses and sales numbers that would sustain careers dedicated only to comic-making. They tell the cautionary tale that being good at something might not be enough to make a living. At the same time, these memes are a canny way to sell himself. They are, after all, content, and the Internet prizes content above all things. And they are content that is heavily interacted with, that Mancini’s fans share and identify with. But, at the same time, the “reading contract” that Mancini establishes with his fans does not imply money. Mancini has never monetized his memes, or his Instagram account. He has not opened a donation account, or started making illustrations on demand, or sold books with his memes. In fact, I would argue, it is this particular stance on the creator’s side that makes him so adored and popular among his fans. The fact that he does not ask them for anything. In a certain way, the way he presents his work as an artist being just as precarious and difficult as any other work helps evaporate the distance between producer and consumer and generate shared community. This is an ambivalent stance. His popularity on social networks could help him alleviate his precarity, but he deliberately chooses not to. I think this stems from his belief that his memes are secondary objects, made just for fun, and that his real work are his graphic novels. Charles Hatfield has spoken about the tension between the “punk” and the “curator” in indie comics. The punk believes “that the form is at its best an underground art, teasing and outraging bourgeois society from a gutter-level position of economic hopelessness and (paradoxically) unchecked artistic freedom” (Hatfield 2005, xi–xii). I believe Mancini is closer to this position. But, at the same time, this “punk stance” is filled with humour and, as we have seen, is also the butt of the joke, which makes his precarity fun rather than sad or angry. However, his rejection of monetization practices

176  Amadeo Gandolfo makes this punk stance more coherent, even if it comes to his detriment: he can continue mythologizing and poking fun at his precarity without “betraying it,” something which, perhaps, his community would reproach. To conclude, and to answer some of the lingering questions posed at the beginning, I believe Mancini’s memes to be an integral part of his work as an artist. However, I do not believe they are the same thing as his oeuvre. They could be understood as a metadiscourse on his metier as a cartoonist, with a humorous tone, which shares certain characteristics with forms of graphic humour. They could also be understood as a form of autobiography, albeit one that is rarely understandable when taken out of context, something that is increasingly difficult given the way Facebook buries information and makes chronological scrolling increasingly difficult. For one to understand the memes of Pedro as part of his life story, one must have knowledge of what was going on in his life at different points in time, something that is not easy to trace in his memes, but rather in his Facebook status’ updates, or, even more difficult, his Instagram stories, which disappear after 24 hours. Perhaps this is why compiling said memes is not fruitful: they should be constantly accompanied by exegesis. I believe Pedro Mancini’s memes have their natural habitat on the Internet, and that their function is bringing together Pedro and his audience. These memes aim to build community and an image of Pedro as an author who can make fun of himself, and thus is more relatable and closer to his audience and his peers. Through a carefully curated act of defenestration, Pedro is, in fact, building bridges, making himself and his readers feel less alone.

Notes

1. The author would like to thank Pedro Mancini for his generous approval for image usage. 2. This is a popular meme template employed to poke fun at people who try to pass as younger than they are or to laugh at oneself for engaging in such a behaviour. 3. As I write this, Instagram has suspended Mancini’s account, citing nebulous reasons related to phishing. Mancini tried unsuccessfully to recover it but was forced to open a new one, thus losing a priceless archive of memes and reactions. 4. He usually got between 100 and 200 likes on Facebook during 2018 and 2019, alongside 15 to 30 comments. This number decreased during 2020, partly because he started being more active on Instagram, partly due to the decreased use of Facebook by the demographic which follows him. Since his Instagram account has been deleted, figures for interactions there have disappeared, but he has opened a new account with less followers, but whose likes hover between 200 and 300 per meme. 5. Who, nevertheless, also gives one of the most popular workshops for scriptwriting in the city of Buenos Aires.

References Benjamin, Walter. 2007. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books. Blackmore, Susan J. 2000. The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dawkins, Richard. 2016. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2016. Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

The Memes of Pedro Mancini 177 Gandolfo, Amadeo. 2020. “Los Planetas Vagabundos.” Strapazin, March 2020, (138): 16–27. Gardner, Jared. 2008. “Autography’s Biography, 1972—2007.” Biography 31 (1): 1–26. Hatfield, Charles. 2005. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Mancini, Pedro. 2018a. “El Último.” Facebook. April 25. https://www.facebook.com/ pedro.hordak/posts/1825845230835969. ———. 2018b. “Mientras Tanto …” Facebook. May 14. https://www.facebook.com/ pedro.hordak/posts/1848326635254495. ———. 2018c. “Para Reflexionar.” Facebook. June 13. https://www.facebook.com/ photo?fbid=1883992241687934&set=a.1202991409788024. ———. 2018d. “Para Reflexionar.” Facebook. July 27. https://www.facebook.com/ pedro.hordak/posts/1959710324116125. ———. 2018e. “Empiezan Oficialmente Mis Vacaciones.” Facebook. October 20. https://www.facebook.com/pedro.hordak/posts/2087621554658334. ———. 2019a. “Mientras Tanto …” Facebook. March 27. https://www.facebook.com/ pedro.hordak/posts/2325840954169725. ———. 2019b. “Siempre Sad Comics.” Facebook. June 20. https://www.facebook.com/ pedro.hordak/posts/2469380289815790. ———. 2019c. “De La Deep Web.” Facebook. August 30. https://www.facebook.com/ pedro.hordak/posts/2596374460449705. ———. 2019d. “Encontrado En Un Foro de Dibujantes de La Paternal.” Facebook. September 27. https://www.facebook.com/pedro.hordak/posts/2648316575255493. ———. 2020a. “Ah Ño.” Facebook. May 1. https://www.facebook.com/pedro.hordak/ posts/4219519648135170. ———. 2020b. “No Lo Entenderías.” Facebook. October 17. https://www.facebook. com/pedro.hordak/posts/3679705742116566. Shifman, Limor. 2015. Memes in Digital Culture. Boca Raton and London: CRC Press. Troemel, Brad. 2020. “Repetition Mindset (1/4).” Instagram. May 4. https://www.instagram.com/p/B_xllrLBUnU/. Wiggins, Bradley E. 2019. The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture: Ideology, Semiotics, and Intertextuality. London and New York: Routledge.

12 In Conversation with Vincent Giard A Decade Taking Care of a Little Colossus Enrique Bordes Introduction I felt I had the means, with talent and ideas. It was natural for me to support others, friends whose work I liked, in their creation by setting up conditions to work, and dialogue to push that work further. There was a need: I had resources. Caring for the community was a given. (Giard, interview)1 Vincent Giard (b. 1983, Montreal), author, editor, “locomotive” (Cité iBDi 2012) of the independent BD in Quebec during a decade, is a figure that demonstrates how a creative ecosystem can be brought to life—and death—around an individual, in times of pure crisis (2008–2019). In the fragile publishing context of alternative/avant-garde BD, Giard occupied a central position as a catalyst for the spaces that gave life to a creative community: a workshop, several publishing houses, a web platform, different festivals, and even organized political protest. His willingness to create in cooperation and care for his community made him and his website the vital organ of a creative and editorial ecosystem. From his personal production, Giard tests the limits of the language of comics in dialogue with animation and the pioneering use of networks. French-speaking Canada is a particular comics habitat, as Jimmy Beaulieu says, it has the advantage of “an enviable strategic position” (Beaulieu 2012, 55) that can absorb the influences from the three most prominent comics traditions: United States, France, and Japan. “Economically speaking, Quebec is, then, not yet a paradise for comics authors, but on the creative level, you can feel the electricity in the air” (Beaulieu 2012, 55). On the market side, the production has been too conditioned by either the French or the US markets; Canadian comics “have always existed on the edge” (Grace and Hoffman 2018, 12). Beaulieu, a figure from the previous generation that is still key to understand the alternative scene, explains the historical situation:

DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-17

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 179 On a rapid overview, the history of twentieth-century Québécois comics looks like a series of booms rapidly followed by busts (‘Perpetual New Beginnings’, as Jacques Samson would say). (Beaulieu 2012, 26) It was not until the 2000s that conditions changed with both the reduction of costs for book production and the perceived change towards the medium, the graphic novel label, and “the way that the soft-cover black and white format was perceived” (Beaulieu 2012, 27). The push of a new generation of authors at the start of the new millennium—Diane Obomsawin (b. 1959), Michel Rabagliati (b. 1961), Jimmy Beaulieu (b. 1974)—is experienced as an effervescent revenge (Bordeleau 2005) that takes advantage of the new publishing and formatting possibilities (Beaulac 2018). It is also no accident that Expozine, the successful Montreal small press fair centred in zines and comics, was born in 2002. Giard recognizes the timeliness of his arrival on the more alternative scene at this particular moment, acknowledging the presence of Beaulieu’s generation: (…) it’s true that, in the history of comics in Quebec, I arrived at a special time: after a series of departures without succession (André Montpetit and the Chiendent group in the 1960s, Caroline Merola or Lucie Faniel in the 1980s)), it felt like the first time that a generation of authors was still actively around when a new one came on board; there finally was continuity, a handover. (Giard, interview)

Poetry drawn with lead Giard has a vigorous line that maintains the gestures of primitive drawing (see Figure 12.1), the freshness of a child’s sketch with the utmost skill (Leonkpow 2017). Giard had an impact when he first appeared online through his animated cartoons (Delporte 2009; McCloud 2010; Hudson 2010). However, if we strip his drawing of those technical additions, we are left with the pure essence of drawing. Drawing in his more natural state, which is pencil drawing— crayon à plomb. With a surreal tone, the robust prominence of his stroke, and the structures he builds with it, his comics gain an enormous poetic capacity. Poetry is about making images with the boundaries of language. Comics allow for this too: to make images appear in the hiatus between other images, images that can only be read within a sequence. (Giard, interview) Giard’s work tends to concatenate a flow of drawn forms that, at times, might seem to be the actual subject of his stories.

180  Enrique Bordes

Figure 12.1  Two spreads from the zine Fonte n. 10 (2012) by Vincent Giard. They connect to, in Giard’s words, “a disastrous artist residency in Angouleme, and refer to drawings by Nicolas Lachapelle and Zviane” (Original in colour).

The drawings that interest me, the ones that I find successful, are the ones that couldn’t be anything else but a drawing. I’m not interested in realism per se. I’m not interested in comics where the text is self-sufficient either (…)

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 181 maybe there’s no dilemma between drawing for a comic or drawing full stop if you can build one out of the other. It’s always a complicated job to make something appear without overdoing it: I feel that my more written stories—Charlotte of the Future, for example—would work just as well in prose, and so are not necessary comics. (Giard, interview) “Bandes dessinées nécéssaires” is a strong commitment for a creator. His work “strives to erode the narrow boundaries within which we would like to confine comics without recognising their abstract or chaotic qualities” (Martin 2015). Limits are tested in every possible margin: codes of drawing and narrative structures, formats and technologies, diffusion, and context. (…) I try to make each drawing into a comic strip: I try to make each image, even if it’s not in a sequence, contain enough potentiality for us to be able to guess at the lines of a narrative: the images have an out-of-frame, a before and after, a life. And at the same time, they have their own plasticity: they are drawings that live specifically because they are drawings, or even drawings of drawings. (Giard, interview)

On influences As a Montrealer, Giard’s comic influences have this globalized view, with traces that can be followed from Japan to the big neighbour in the south. It is not rare to see visual quotes in his pages; the ones in Le wagon engourdi (2011) are even specified on the last page. These images represent something like grades—Hergé a grammar, Franquin a style, Moebius a volume to fill yourself, Fort Thunder the right to make noise—which I evoke by quoting them. But it’s a play on memory, on commonplaces, rather than an acknowledgement of debt or anything like that. (Giard, interview) It is also crucial how he vindicates the influence of women in his proceedings. He names figures that have been key for him: Julie Delporte, Sophie Yanow, Sophie Bédard, Fumiko Takano, Kenojuak, Fanny Grosshans, Obom, Amanda Baeza, Margot Ferrick, “absolutely essential in the development of the danger in the autobiographical pact, of my political understanding of creation, of care” (Giard, interview). At the other extreme, his influence on his generation is harder to trace: his main website is still down, the collective and publishing projects he was involved in are closed, and his only long solo work, Aplomb (2010), has been out of print for a decade.

182  Enrique Bordes Through his collaborations and editing work, we will see how his impact on the community is notorious, but such a strong craft does not go unnoticed in the eyes of fellow artists. Going deeper, we can guess his influence in the details, in the expressive gestures of Zviane’s gif comics, or in the early works of Nicholas LaChapelle and Sophie Yanow.

Digital pioneer However, in addition to his drawing skills, he understood and exploited the possibilities of expanding comics into the digital world, across form and medium, from animation to the web. His training and development as an artist took place at the same time that society as a whole was exploring digital technology. This generation of pioneers is acutely aware of the before and after, of the possibilities of transforming one world into another. It is not the same to be present when the city traces its streets as it is to be born into a consolidated urban form. I was extraordinarily lucky to have access to computers at the precise junction of eras: when you had to understand how they worked in order to use them, and when they were simple enough for a curious child. (a curious child born into a wealthy family) The tools programmed by Bill Atkinson—MacPaint and the extraordinary HyperCard—have so shaped my practice, not to say my brain. The drawing cut into drawn lines that facilitate an abstraction of volume, editable and reproducible, the frame animation, the hyperlinks, the rhizomic construction, the invitation to exploratory play … (Giard, interview). One of the most evident areas of his visual research is the inclusion of looped animations as a part of the comic structure, from the detail of a drawing to a whole frame. These alterations strengthen the narrative or even become an essential part of it. His webcomic Bol (2009) mimics the effects of a hard-drinking night; the alcohol hits the protagonist on her way home, distorting—in the looped gif animation—the space surrounding her. Even Scott McCloud, then a strong advocate against motion comics, would say that Bol “works for me,” as the “looping animation still communicates a static span of time” (McCloud 2010). At Le safari aux fourmis (2008), the animation takes care of the narrative and the poetic message behind the drawing. Other times, the animation is a mere graphic operation: a moving background, an abstract snowstorm, a 3D effect. Should these works be considered as comics or as animation/net art? Julie Delporte clarifies the way in an article on her comrade’s art: We will conclude with the idea proposed by Philippe Marion and André Gaudreault of the need to adopt a “dynamic definition of the medium,” to abandon the “fixed and monolithic” conceptions that seek to exclude works

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 183 from the domain known as “comics” under various pretexts, or to compartmentalise practices within strict definitions that creation could not care less about. (Delporte 2009) Definitions aside, in these digital pieces, technological innovations are introduced with full awareness: animation is contained, interaction is forbidden. I worked in the video game industry, after having spent my childhood programming them (thanks to HyperCard)—I’m not very attracted to anything that becomes interactive, that calls for exhausting its possibilities. (Giard, interview) Furthermore, in his digital quest, he still did not explore areas such as generative drawing: One project I worked on a lot but never reached an acceptable level was “the doubling machine”: a procedural drawing, a drawing machine for me, in comic book sequences (…). But I don’t have the discipline to be an effective programmer and (…) these capricious tools have rarely been publicly useful. (Giard, interview) While searching that generative drawing, he had a key influence in mind: I’m thinking of some of the generators in James Patterson’s Presstube, a great aesthetic shock of my adolescence, or more generally John Pound’s Code Cartooning and Harold Cohen’s Aaron. In short, not much to do with today’s machine learning à la Holly Herndon. (Giard, interview) Presstube allows us to close a loop that goes back to his pure drawing with crayon à plomb. Looking at the automatically generated strokes from Patterson’s work, we advert some of the organic shapes that guide Giard’s abstractions. Giard is not only a pioneer capturing the essence of digital drawing through its possibilities—movement, colour, scroll, programming—but also with his heavy presence in the early social networked work, mainly through blogging and social platforms. I liked Tumblr and its queer-friendly community (at first), partly because its simple interface—which invited images for context, rather than the long diary texts of first—generation blogs, and its vision of community where to respond to a post, you pick it up and respond to it at home rather than commenting underneath—resembled the solutions I’d come up with for Aencre years before, up to interface details. (Giard, interview) Most of his Tumblr work was a direct web feed from Aencre.

184  Enrique Bordes

Aencre, web publishing as performance The name “Aencre” stems from a terrible pun: “encre” is ink, and “ancre” is an anchor. This was a wrong choice, for two reasons: 1 most of my work is actually in pencil, au crayon à plomb. 2 I have to spell it out and explain it, every time, forever (Giard, interview). Aencre.org was the core of Giard’s creative practice since 1998, although there is not available activity in the Internet Archive before 2006. Giard posted regularly there, at least since 2009—in Tumblr, there are dated images that go back to 2001. It went dark in 2019. Aencre, in my eyes, was a work in itself. And in that sense it’s the most accomplished thing I’ve created. I still read webcomics avidly, it’s a form I like a lot, and even if the golden age is long gone (especially because of the flattening of new platforms …). This is what I would have liked to do if the long form had been within my reach. The accumulation and interplay of short forms in Aencre is as close as I could get. (Giard, interview) For me, aencre.org was net.art since its beginning in 1998. We focus a lot on animation and the infinite canvas, but one possibility that we do not often talk about with digital art is its possibility of temporality, of performance. You can go and see it one day and it’s one way, and the next day you go back and it tells a different story. It gives a quality to the moment of consultation. (Giard, interview) At the moment, the site is apparently dead, the performance has finished. A black page receives us with just an email address. I was at the end of my story—from the summer of 1998 to 2018, that is: all the archives got muddled, the drawings gradually replaced by abstract versions of themselves, and then the lights went out. The site has the power to disappear; it is gone now. As if the play was over. It was only like that once, only for a moment, and the moment is over. (Giard, interview) There are several partial copies of Aencre on the Internet Archive, and some of its files are still online, in different subdomains, or hidden in the folder structure. Recently the author made this more evident, making most of his work available in a pdf link, now visible on the main page.

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 185 The whole web portion disappeared. I left what was on paper: the pdfs of books and zines, of journal publications—some are missing: they’re basically just things I had the files and the rights to—, because once it’s published, it doesn’t make sense to erase those stories. It’s out there, it exists, it’s on your bookshelf, it belongs to you: it’s not mine anymore. If you are interested in my work, I might as well make it available to you, and why not for free? (Giard, interview) Including its finale, aencre.org became a perfect metaphor of what Giard is, related to his context. It has roots in his younger days, it explodes around the community, and the community itself cannot be told without it. Literally hosted in Aencre’s server are still—or can be accessed through archive.org—several pieces of that story: La maison de la BD (atelier.aencre.org), the Fonte magazine (fonte.aencre.org), multiple other authors blogs (like nylso. aencre.org), a virtual collective protest (manif.aencre.org) or the arguments behind it (hausse.aencre.org), and even a festival (48h.aencre.org).

Creating as a community Creating comics has always been a collaborative, communal endeavour for me. (Giard, interview) The child is the father of the man. Giard feels connected with cooperative creation since his early years: improvising with his family; gathering his “summer camp crowd around a comic that would serve as souvenir”; getting involved in the student newspaper … All of this, Giard remembers, done while he “kept drawing” (Giard, interview). And drawing he was when he entered Montreal’s alternative BD community through the workshop that Jimmy Beaulieu runs in the Cégep du Vieux Montréal. The parascholar workshop, still today, runs for ten weeks, three hours each. I don’t think I learned much from that class—the point was really a weekly excuse to get to work on a short story, to be printed at the end of the semester in a collective zine titled Vestibulles. Overly motivated, I’d whip up a whole new story each week … (Giard, interview) In fact, we see his work appear in Vestibulles 38. In the Cégep he had the chance to meet Julie Delporte, François Samson-Dunlop, Luc Bossé, Michel Hellman, Zviane … Besides the latter, none of them had been published yet (see Figure 12.2).

186  Enrique Bordes

Figure 12.2  Giard’s illustration for the exhibition “Cartoonists’ influences around the magazine Vestibulles.” In Giard’s words: “everyone did fan-art of classic American and Franco-Belgian series, but I just drew the gang at those first workshops” (Giard, interview).

Jimmy was also very enthusiastic about my work, and quickly put me under his wing as a promising newcomer (…). I also met through him friends from Mécanique Générale like David Turgeon, Sébastien Trahan, Pascal Girard, whose idea of comics as performance felt central, and the galvanizing (then-)underground world of the Expozine micropublishing fair.

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 187 So, yeah, Vestibulles was indeed my first step into the Québec comics community—as I think it has been for an important portion of new authors of the last decade. Hats off to Jimmy! (Giard, interview) Jimmy Beaulieu opened the door, and Giard entered with passion the comics community. So when I saw the possibility of a comics community in Montreal, I threw myself into it (and fell in love with someone in it): workshop, collective zines, festival organization, a collective studio … and especially in the writing of the self, in which my new circle and their productions appeared: I never really separated creation and community. (Giard, interview) By mixing with other comics creators, Giard was able to take off some of the pressure of his extreme self-demand, a block to creation “almost all the time” (Giard, interview), and this boosted his output. Within a few years, he became a common denominator in several books. At the moment, aencre.org/pdf hosts 23 works co-created with David Turgeon, Julie Delporte, Oriane Lassus, Sophie Bédard … up to 11 different combinations of authors. That’s partly why many of my publications—all my “proper books”—are collaborations: in teamwork, in order to honour the work of the other, you accept what you have produced in the less elastic context of improvisation, performance, exchange. A weakness that I’d toil over on my own becomes an acceptable quirk in teamwork. (Giard, interview) It is important to remark that this collaboration is not the classic division of labour in the industry: scriptwriter, illustrator, inker, colourist … In many of these pieces, everybody draws, writes, builds the page, colours … everything that forms part of the process is shared, and it does not matter who does what: it is a true collective artistic production. It is up to the reader to guess who is who, what strokes are closer to whose style. Giard’s poetry becomes a musical instrument that is integrated into new harmonies. In most works, like those in collaboration with Sophie Bédard, David Turgeon or Julie Delporte, he throws himself to a total hybridization of styles. This often results in something like a third author: Les pièces détachées, for example, is less an assembly of David’s and my styles than a kind of new voice, more distant and muted. It was perhaps with Sophie Bédard that the work—writing, cutting, rewriting, drawing, and redrawing, inking, fussing, and remixing—was the

188  Enrique Bordes most intermixed and shared. I’m still gutted that we didn’t manage to complete our series of short stories about witches. (Giard, interview) Pieces like Brousse, 2 with Singeon become a stunning improvisation from a virtuous duo: With Singeon, everything felt easy: we responded to each other in relaxed solos, remixing each other’s drawings, without getting too wet, like seasoned jazzmen. (Giard, interview) The way these collaborations articulate it is never fixed; it can even become an integral part of the narrative. In De concert (2018), one of the last books published by La Mauvaise Tête, we can follow “a night show at the Sala” where four characters from “la faune alternative de Montréal” interact. At the start, each character is drawn by one of the authors: Jimmy Beaulieu, Sophie Bédard, Singeon, and Giard … … By the middle of the book Singeon, Sophie and I are having fun writing and drawing each other’s. (…) We did letter our character’s speech bubbles. I thought pushing it further and giving every character their own singular voice was a quirky way to plug in calligraphic cameos by friends—like Julie Doucet and the late Geneviève Castrée. (Giard, interview)

Colosse and the new Colosse Before Colosse there was Mécanique Générale, a collective born in 2000 around the book Avons-nous les bons pneus? It was formed by six comic authors: Jimmy Beaulieu, leader of the initiative, Benoît Joly (b. 1963), Sébastien Trahan (b. 1973), Philippe Girard (b. 1971), Luc Giard (b. 1956) and Éric Asselin (b. 1969). MG became a publishing structure for their own work, with the obvious echoes of the French collective L’Association. Two years later, Mécanique Générale was bought by a bigger publisher, Les 400 Coups. Now in an official and cumbersome structure, the more adventurous authors no longer had a platform for shorter, more spontaneous forms: Jimmy Beaulieu and company founded “La collection colosse,” where they could release small zines outside the bookstore circuit. It was an exhilarating dream: to offer, in a micro-publishing fair, a table of new titles that would be sold out at the end of the day. (Giard, interview)

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 189 Colosse was born out of the necessity from these creators of escaping the hardship of the publishing job. In autumn 2002, I created Colosse, an alternative collection, within which I could practise édition sauvage (guerilla publishing), to borrow Tanguy Habrand’s delightful term. (…) When I look back on the MG venture, I still shudder at the number of unhappy memories that it evokes. Colosse evokes none at all. These little books were produced in a spirit of pleasure and light-heartedness. (Beaulieu 2012, 35) Beaulieu quit Mécanique Générale in 2008. At first, this liberated him of the burdens of the big editorial process, but with time the project became abandoned, “with no real direction or renewal to its catalogue” (Giard, interview). Giard had entered the frame just months before and became a close friend of Jimmy and David Turgeon, an active participant in the collection. Attracted by the challenge of editing, Giard started taking responsibility for Colosse and began “steering the structure” (Giard)even feeling like he “was borrowing the keys to (his) stepfather’s car.” From this moment, the collection sometimes would be called “The nouvelle collection Colosse.” With time, and the help of new digital printing, these zines became “more ambitious: from low-pagination black-and-white stapled zines (…) to colour, bound books,” where he would even test the limits of the rich blacks the technology now allowed. Giard ended up editing 66 titles for the collection. Even his important Aplomb is published as a book-zine at Colosse: Aplomb would end up without a publisher, a zine in book form, outside the circuits. My book would not exist in bookshops or in critics’ hands, I would not have access to creative grants, but I didn’t care. (Giard, interview)

La Mauvaise Tête In 2010, a new collective—with publishing tendencies—was born. La Mauvaise Tête included Julie Delporte (b. 1983), Sebastien Trahan (b. 1973), David Turgeon (b. 1975), Jimmy Beaulieu (b. 1974), Catherine Ocelot (b. 1974), and Vincent himself—“it was only years later that I noticed that I was the youngest” (Giard, interview). The de facto disappearance of Mécanique Générale left “a hole in the publishing landscape: where could books like ours exist?” (Giard, interview). Without distributed work, there was no critical impact, no way to exist in the broader cultural scene. They needed a “real publishing house to publish books that were like us.”

190  Enrique Bordes (…) the guerrilla structure was not adapted to zines that ended up accidentally successful: Pinkerton, for example, far exceeded our capacity to supply. I couldn’t spend all my time reprinting and distributing copies by hand—and therefore be too overwhelmed to edit other zines: circulation and demand had to kick into high gear. (Giard, interview) It was not until 2011 that Giard and Trahan concentrated La Mauvaise Tête on publishing. The first printed projects arrived the year after: La muse récursive (2012) by David Turgeon and Du chez-soi (2012) by Ariane Dénommé. Petite cosmogonie de la mauvaise tête (2012), written by Sébastien Trahan and illustrated by Giard, narrates the origins of La Mauvaise Tête, up to the morning they receive their first books from the printer, in early 2012. “I don’t know if I’ll ever coax Sébastien into writing the rest of the story, including all the book projects that ended up published elsewhere” (Giard, interview). They made La Mauvaise Tête a two-speed publishing structure and gave back to Jimmy his Colosse name. Because of the proximity in tone and headliners, Colosse and La Mauvaise Tête were confused and mixed up in the critical discourse for a long time. I wanted to stop paying the price (…) and make La Mauvaise Tête a twospeed publisher, which would publish both distributed books with a real mediatic existence, and zines reserved for more militant bookshops, but which could still pay upfront their authors: Obom, Maxime Gérin, Dogs Understand … (Giard, interview). Twenty-one books in seven years. However, the Mauvaise Tête experiment came to a sudden halt in 2018. At the moment, some of its books are available solely on the Colosse online store. The bigger publishing platform got eaten by the impossible-to-find colossus.

Editor, chef d’atelier … locomotive For Giard, publishing is a creative act. No step of the editorial process was left to chance, even playing with the condition of the nanotirages and their relation to legal deposits, as Rannou reveals in Vincent Giard et les jeux de piste (Rannou 2018). In the zine Fonte number 10 (2012), Giard narrates in BD these feelings in what seems to be an autobiographical night scene. “Why do you prefer being an editor rather than an author?” asks Giard’s partner. “To me there’s no difference …” and his speech bubbles muddle with his arms, as he enthusiastically explains that he is an author even while he is an editor. “I think you like it more because it’s easier for you,” blurts out his bedfellow with naked sincerity.

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 191 It’s often easier to see where someone else’s work is going, understand what they’re up against, and propose solutions, than to have to invent the whole system; it’s easier to point out to a friend that their bike wheel is warped and offer to fix it—I’ll go get my tools, don’t move!—than to build my own bike, although I’d go further that way… That’s kind of how I got into the role of consultant, editor, workshop head (chef d’atelier). (Giard, interview)

Under the same roof In 2009, “tired of doing silk-screening in our little apartment” Giard seeks with Julie Delporte and Luc Bossé a “gigantic space” that becomes a studio (Giard, interview). Very soon other artists are invited to work at an atelier with an ambitious name: la Maison de la bande dessinée de Montréal. The need is great (…) and despite our desire for a self-managed co-op with a horizontal hierarchy, no one really wants to do the organisational work— all these people don’t have much money, so we work out ways to keep it affordable, but low entry fees lead to sparse implication, and the high turnover prevents a permanent organisation. So I patch up. Despite myself, I end up running an artists’ house that welcomes twenty or so people at a time. (Giard, interview) The constellation of authors keeps growing, mostly after the 2012 events, and including people from Montréal, the rest of Québec, and soon Europe and the United States. La Maison starts offering residencies, and the flux of “extraordinary people” is continuous: “they come for a few weeks, a few months, extend their stay, come back regularly” or even end up applying for Canadian citizenship. According to their records by 2016, more than 50 creators had worked in La Maison. Among them: Sophie Yanow, Connor Willumsen, Singeon, Sam Alden, Roman Muradov, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Benoît Guillaume, Jul Maroh, Oriane Lassus, Vincent Perriot, Sébastien Lumineau, Carl Roosens, Noémie Marsily, Mirion Malle.3 Giard, still “enrolling in Vestibulles back and back again” would also bring from Jimmy’s workshop new talent to the studio, people like Cathon, Sophie Bédard, Xavier Cadieux or Mathieu Larone, who will all turn drawing into a profession. The Maison was a communal hub: besides the dance parties, many times a week we’d cook up supper for over ten hungry cartoonists. It wasn’t always delicious, but it felt like home. (Giard, interview)

192  Enrique Bordes The Maison became the headquarters of Colosse and La Mauvaise Tête. Other editorial projects were born parallel to Giard’s activity: Pow, created by Luc Bossé. Planches, a professionally distributed magazine, also held its offices at the studio and is still running; Giard was a consultant, did layout, and edited the 2016–2017 issues. The house also served as the base for the festival Les 48 Heures de la Bande dessinée de Montréal, a “festival of creation” directed by Julie Delporte that ran for four years (2008–2011) at the Goethe-Institut in Montreal. The workshop had Fonte, a “de facto internal magazine”4 that ran for 10+1 numbers. It was meant, initially, to capture the weekly rhythm of the atelier. The zine had an ultra-reduced print run of three copies for each participant (Rannou 2018). The printed copies became an object of desire, and the whole run is archived online. The 2012 protests, and the life they generated around the Maison, were the collective spark that started it.

The community at war In 2012, arrived at the Printemps érable (the maple spring), a strong wave of student protests well in sync with other events of the world around those years of crisis. The fight had a very clear spark and target: the proposal by neoliberal Premier Jean Charest to raise university tuition. Giard and his atelier joined the protests with intensity (see Figure 12.3), against what felt like a direct attack on access to Canadian public education (with structures as the Cégep du Vieux Montreal). Maël Rannou wrote an extensive article about the presence of the BD in the protest, which included an interview with Giard. These comics are quite limited in number, and their authors are mostly young creators, themselves students or recently graduated, all of them less than thirty years old (…) The publication supports for the works are multiple, ranging from paper to digital. (Rannou 2020) It is true that, compared to other media (posters, videos), these comics might be a “limited in number,” but in relation to the presence of comics as an activist tool, and within a global perspective, they represent a unique set. Around Giard alone, we find three very different initiatives, all hosted on aencre.org: Fonte, La hausse en question, and the Manif de bonhommes. Fonte was born from these protests; in its pages, we find a direct reflection of them. The tract La hausse en question was an initiative by François SamsonDunlop and Joseph Baril. Fifteen authors of BD explained the reasons behind the protest, it got distributed online, in the streets, and relayed by newspapers. Maybe the most symbolic and unique action was the Manif de bonhommes. An idea of Evlyn Moreau, it was a digital collective protest of illustrated marching

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 193

Figure 12.3  Giard’s illustrations for the exhibition The Montrealer (2017), an homage to The New Yorker organized by the association MNR Projet (lemontrealer. com). Giard chose to reconnect with the Printemps érable for the occasion (original in colour).

bonhommes, a snowman figure central in the Québec Winter Carnival. Still online (manif.aencre), it shows an amazingly long scroll that includes the submissions of more than 150 artists—including a seven-year-old one.

The end? Bonjour! This is Vincent Giard’s Tumblr, where he reposted bits and pieces from aencre.org (1999-2019)./Vincent was a cartoonist, and a publisher as La Mauvaise Tête. (2012–2019) A part of Giard died in 2019. A whole creative ecosystem, a community of comic creators was shaped around a unique connector. That is the power, that is its

194  Enrique Bordes fragility. The same human connections, the affinities that build the network, can suddenly break or change, making the whole structure collapse. The experiment came to a sudden halt in 2018, in a messy separation where I found myself rejected by almost my entire milieu. This generalized break-up made me realise, among other things, a major blind angle of mine: by settling into the role of provider to my friends and colleagues, I had entered unequal footing where friendship as I imagined it (collaboration and mutual support, in my leftist idealistic perspective) was not possible. We finished publishing De concert and a reworked reissue of War of Streets and Houses, gave back the rights to the authors and donated the catalog to regional and carceral libraries, and Sébastien (furious and disgusted at the betrayal of the scene) and I (inconsolable and lost) put the key under the door: a bitter and definitive end. (Giard, interview) Also, according to Sébastien Trahan La Mauvaise Tête resulted in a catastrophic financial balance (Tardif 2019). Around that time, other authors, including Delporte and Turgeon, created a new magazine. One cannot avoid trying to read more out of its title: Tristesse. Nevertheless, apart from the exact reason behind the demise, two ideas remain. The first one, without the community, Giard suddenly feels lost: I never really separated creation and community … until I learned the hard way that one is not the other. Maybe there is a way for me to draw without community, but I haven’t found it yet. (Giard, interview) Secondly, this sudden collapse revealed the fragility of structures built around personal affinity. Without public service structures, in the delicate balance within collective and individual that a mass media needs, the more alternative options suffer, especially in times of crisis.

The future Other figures we have seen, like Jimmy Beaulieu, Julie Delporte or David Turgeon, are also pivotal for the community, but none of them are as complete as Giard. He had all the cards: the talent, the context, the age, the technological timing, the financial leeway … and the conscience—and need—to take care of the group. Quebec alternative BD scene is well alive with projects that continue, like Pow Pow, others that start, like Nouvelle Adresse (Tardif 2019), and even older ones that awake with a new energy: Mécanique Générale in person (Leduc 2013). Jimmy Beaulieu is still around with his workshop, teaching a new generation.

In Conversation with Vicent Giard 195 On Giard’s side, he feels there are younger people to continue “aspects of his practice.” People like Mathieu Larone, Al Gofa, Maxime Gérin or Gabor Bata, Montrealers who started in the Maison. I feel I can’t go back to working the way I used to, but I don’t know if I’ve still got it to invent a way once again, or even if it is possible. I’m working on it—or, more precisely as we say in French, ça me travaille: it’s working me in. (Giard, interview)

Notes

1. Vincent Giard, email interview with the author, July 1, 2021. All the quotations by Giard have been taken from this interview, unless stated otherwise. 2. A blog at Aencre and Tumblr, and two volumes with Colosse (Giard and Singeon 2011, 2014). 3. La maison de la bande dessinée de Montréal. 2016. “Auteurs invités.” Archive.org, March 21, 2016. http://atelier.aencre.org/juste/invite 4. Vicent Giard, email interview with Maël Rannou, 2020 (provided by Giard).

References Beaulac, Mario. 2018. “Voix en images. Le métadiscourse formel de la BDQ actuelle.” Voix et Images 43, 2 (Winter): 33–47. https://doi.org/10.7202/1045063ar Beaulieu, Jimmy. 2012. “Automythology.” European Comic Art 5, 1 (Spring): 25–56. https://doi.org/10.3167/eca.2012.050104 Bordeleau, Francine. 2005. “La revanche des bédéistes québécois.” Lettres québécoises, 118: 13–16 Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image. 2012. “Vincent Giard.” Accessed September 1, 2021. http://www.citebd.org/spip.php?article4076 Delporte, Julie. 2009. “Les Images Mouvementées de Vincent Giard.” Du9. https:// www.du9.org/dossier/images-mouvementees-de-vincent/ Giard, Vincent and Singeon. 2011. Brousse no 1. Nouvelle Collection Colosse no 42. ––––––. 2014. Brousse no 2. Nouvelle Collection Colosse no 68. Grace, Dominick and Eric Hoffman, eds. 2018. The Canadian Alternative: Cartoonists, Comics, and Graphic Novels. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Hudson, Laura. 2010. “Motion in Comics: Why It Doesn’t Have to Be the Worst Thing Ever.” ComicsAlliance (August 26, 2010). https://comicsalliance.com/motion-in-comics-hybridwebcomics/ Leduc, Jean-Dominic. 2013. “Retour en selle de Mécanique Générale.” Le Journal de Montréal. Accessed September 1, 2021. https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2013/12/07/retouren-selle-de-mecanique-generale Leonkpow. 2017. “Calm Understones Now Transmitting.” Tumblr, March 1, 2017. https://leonkpow.tumblr.com/post/157856700719/scheduling-conflict-with-achild-living-on-the Martin, Côme. 2015. “Aplomb de Vincent Giard.” Du9: l’autre bande dessinée, May. https:// www.du9.org/chronique/aplomb/

196  Enrique Bordes McCloud, Scott. 2010. “Works for Me. Does It Work for You?” Good Morning, Comics August 21, 2010. http://scottmccloud.com/2010/08/24/why-it-works/ Rannou, Maël. 2018. “Vincent Giard et les jeux de piste.” Du9, April, 2018. https:// www.du9.org/dossier/vincent-giard-et-les-jeux-de-piste/ Rannou, Maël. 2020. “La bande dessinée durant le Printemps érable (2012), un outil de diffusion et de mobilisation pour une lutte en cours.” Le Temps des médias 35, 2: 54–71. https://doi.org/10.3917/tdm.035.0054 Tardif, Dominique. 2019. “Une nouvelle adresse pour la bande dessinée québécoise.” Le Devoir. Accessed September 1, 2021. https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/556410/une-nouvelleadresse-pour-la-bande-dessinee-quebecoise

Part V

Spaces of Vulnerability/ Spaces of Action

13 Crises, New Modalities of Social Struggle and the Emergence of LGBTIQ+ Discourses as Revulsive and Autonomous Responses in the Field of Argentine Comics (2016–2020) Laura Cristina Fernández Introduction The narratives on sexual dissidence in the Argentine comics’ scene have gained importance in the last few years, in the context of the economic, social, and political crisis and the visibilization of longstanding problems related to violence against women and the LGBTIQ+ community. Particularly since the last major economic crisis in Argentina (2016–2018), these discourses have become more present in the public agenda, through DIY strategies of alternative circulation and distribution (fanzine festivals and fairs, small publishing houses or artists’ collectives, etc.). It is no coincidence that they have adopted certain formats and spaces (the e-zine, the fanzine, social networks, and websites) through which the young artists promote and express themselves, that is, those born during the 1990s, when Argentina’s traditional comics industry collapsed. This concerns both generational belonging and the new spaces of visibility and social struggle in the context of an economic crisis and the pandemic: street action has lost its privileged place as a revulsive strategy, either because it has become a complement to a calling from the social networks or because it has become a paradoxical space. The latter is due, on the one hand, to the fact that street protest has been criminalized, implicitly or explicitly, for several years in Latin America. As seen in Argentina during the government of Mauricio Macri, in the experiences of Chile since the administration of Sebastián Piñera, during the de facto government of Jeanine Añez in Bolivia, with presidents Lenin Moreno in Ecuador, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Iván Duque in Colombia, protesting against government measures frequently ends up with police brutality or the direct intervention of military forces, which, in our post-dictatorial realities, adds an even more nefarious connotation to state violence. On the other hand, this is related to a recent phenomenon: the (new?) rightwing parties as the main protagonists of street protest in collusion with a highly monopolized and privatized mass media system that magnify and legitimize hate speeches. This is a very disturbing aspect that has led to attacks on feminist DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-19

200  Laura Cristina Fernández and LGBTIQ+ referents (for instance, by ultra-Catholic groups on young people wearing green scarfs)1 and classist hate crimes (Fernando Báez Sosa, murdered by a group of young upper-class rugby players) or gender-based hate crimes (342 femicides and transfemicides between January 1, 2020, and August 8, 2021).2 Whereas until several years ago, the protagonists of such right-wing actions were middle-aged people, after the triumph of the neoliberal party Cambiemos in the 2016 elections, a “new right-wing” made its entrance into political fray: very young referents, influencers with a friendly and carefree style that encourage an ultra-catholic or evangelical discourse, negationists and revisionists who support the last dictatorship (under the premise of “oblivion” as a form of social progress). It is a meritocratic, aspirational, and almost exclusively heteronormative trend (even though there is a “white” catholic feminism and some exceptions of gay referents that adhere to this young “libertarian” tendency). While the growth of the political right is not exclusive to this country, in Argentina, it has an impact on subjectivity due to the long tradition of using the street as a milieu for social struggles since the last military dictatorship (both by left-wing parties and Human Rights groups). In addition, the pandemic context and the sanitary protocols have led to a reconfiguration of the public arena in small but intensive groups of “anti-vaccine” demonstrators or of businessmen and workers with varied ideological motivations (from members of large agricultural corporations and businessmen who oppose the closure of shopping malls, to some left-wing workers that cannot survive on economic aid from the State) who oppose the measures to close shops and areas of public circulation during the quarantine. As I will further elaborate, in this context, feminist and LGBTIQ+ rhetoric emerges as forms of visualization and resistance. With regard to the field of comics, these narratives also imply a political claim against historical practices of exclusion and neglect of the work of these collectives. It is important to clarify that women cartoonists in Argentina have existed since the 1950s (Idelba Dapueto, Gisela Dester, Martha Barnes), but they suffered stigma and discrimination in an extremely male-dominated circuit (Abdalá 2017; Feminismo Gráfico 2019; Vallejos 2006). Since the end of the dictatorship, through iconic magazines such as Fierro and Sexhumor, some women authors began to gain authorial legitimacy: Cristina Breccia, María Alcobre, Maitena, Patricia Breccia. The latter two, in particular, incorporated themes from a feminist perspective. In the mid-late 1990s, within the circuit of fanzines and comic workshops, other female authors emerged: they incorporated some gender issues, but we could not define their work as feminist, strictly speaking. It was not until the arrival of Chicks on Comics3 (2008–present) that we can refer to a collective of women comic artists that changed some of the discourses and practices of the field. As far as the LGBTIQ+ community is concerned, its insertion (both as representations and authors) in the local scene has been very restricted, if not almost non-existent. In the mid-1950s, Copi (Raúl Damonte Botana) began to publish in the humour magazine Tía Vicenta. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, he moved to France where he produced some of his most important work, in which there

Crises, New Modalities and Emergence of LGBTIQ+ Discourses 201 are numerous satirical winks at sexual diversity. But in the “purely Argentine” production, lesbians, gays and transgender people, until the beginning of the 21st century, were represented as stereotypes, either objects of heterosexual eroticism—e.g., the lesbian scenes between pulpy girls that appeared in numerous comic strips of Skorpio (1974–1996) and Fierro 4 (1984–1992) magazines—; demonized—in line with the giallo or suspense films of the time, gay, lesbian or trans people were presented as disturbed, even sociopathic subjects—or ridiculed—both in the homophobic jokes of Sexhumor and in the stereotypes of Columba and Fierro’s comics. Regarding this macho/patriarchal imaginary, Luciano Vecchio, one of the promoters of the group Secuencia Disidente, pointed out in an interview: Until not so long ago, the presence of women at events was very low and there were even fewer diverse identities. It’s not that we weren’t there, but that we were dispersed and on the periphery of the spotlight in a context that used to make you feel left out. This is something that is being reversed very slowly but exponentially thanks to the work and presence of individuals, groups, and an ever-expanding network of affections, added to a sociocultural context where questioning and reversing machismo is in focus. (Perucca 2018)5 We aim to analyze the emergence of dissident narratives as a “new” phenomenon in Argentinean comics and their meaning as revulsive aesthetics and political response, inscribed in a history of discursive struggles that seek to undermine the local patriarchal and neoliberal hegemony (Espinosa Miñoso et al., 2014). More specifically, the objective is to explore the strategies used by these artists to be able to produce within the double exclusion of economic crisis and speeches of violence, exclusion and demonization of women and LGBTIQ+’s groups.

Some relevant theoretical and methodological aspects For this chapter, I have taken as references some works that analyze the construction of imaginaries about “the feminine” and queerness in the media and in comics worldwide, such as the researches of Robbins (1999), Press and Tripodi (2013) and Linke (2021); as well as numerous essays on sexual dissidence in Argentine culture (Contrera and Cuello 2016; Cuello and Disalvo 2020; among others). All of them work on aspects close to critical visual theory, discourse studies and feminist cultural history in which I situate my work. Although the aspects of gender and dissidence will be the most explored here in order to think about this phenomenon, first I would like to briefly dwell on a few aspects that are central to characterize the nature and materiality of the comics that will be analyzed. The first concept comes from the work of Steyerl (2009) and is known as the poor image. I understand that it is not only relevant on a formal level—since these are images for screens, of medium with low definition, designed to be read

202  Laura Cristina Fernández on different devices, to be copied and multiplied—but it is also a concept that makes it possible to unlock a level of meanings related to the condition of existence of these visual discourses and their historical situation of marginality or otherness in contexts of economic and social crises. The poor image also applies when considering other analogue formats that perform a similar function, sometimes articulated with virtuality. For instance, cheaply printed fanzines, a format that the current generations rescued from the alternative movement at the end of the 20th century after the crisis—although the reproducibility in these examples is still limited, as are their spaces of circulation. Fanzines served as a community for young people who began making comics in the midst of an economic crisis, with its paper production as a counterpart to what is published on the web. Another key concept is that of art/political practices, borrowed from the works of Longoni and Mestman (2010) and Richard (2013). As I mentioned before, the field of Argentine comics in the 21st century follows certain logics that disrupt the meaning of the profession present in other more prosperous industries. That same constant state of economic crisis (crashing or latent, an idea I will develop later) implies rethinking the meaning of language in conflictive contexts. The young authors of the last twenty years (and especially those who deal with gender and dissidence) find in self-published comics, in the fanzine or e-zine, accessible means and formats to develop a discourse, to “make themselves heard” without the filter of the editorial policies of mainstream magazines, newspapers and publishing houses. I understand, then, with a Benjaminian echo, that technological formats influence meanings, and their choice or rejection implies a political position towards the world, even more so when a “poor” format is articulated with a critical perspective on the hegemonic discourses on sex, class, and race. The poor image, for these artists, is the accessible image multiplied in any device: a means of proposing discourses that try to confront hetero-cis, bourgeois, western, white hegemony. The logic of comics production in Argentina is shaped by the peculiar characteristics of an industry that has long been dismantled and rebuilt with fragments of past and present crises, making it impossible to “apply” a stable concept of crisis as it is thought of in other contexts. It is essential to refer to the work of Gago (2017), Williams (2012) and Sassen (2014) concerning the “rolling apocalypse” of the neoliberal system and the possibilities of a post-neoliberal economic dynamic based on collective practices. However, the idea of post-crisis does not seem accurate to understand the profound interweaving of the crisis as a vital logic in Argentina’s dynamics (particularly, the cultural ones). I understand, on the other hand, that there is no such post-crisis, since the crisis is part of the system itself, it pertains to the functioning of the economic and cultural field. The idea of a permanent crisis, with stages of latency or relative control and growth—moments between-crises—and periods of economic/institutional breakdown—which have traditionally been identified as isolated crises in more conventional historical/sociological approaches—fits more appropriate with the Argentine reality. Within this dynamic, which could be called a productive crisis, it is worth considering certain driving forces that can be triggered

Crises, New Modalities and Emergence of LGBTIQ+ Discourses 203 by crises, analyzing the survival strategies of independent comic book authors and publishers over the last thirty years. In this sense, it is important to observe how they have readapted to the harshest episodes of crisis, and even if these scenarios have not boosted the emergence of discourses that were not visible in times of growth and stability. By this, I refer to Gago’s neoliberalism from below and also Sassen’s predatory formations, both concepts that are related to practices in contexts of exclusion and marginalization. These authors highlight the reappearance and actualization of pre-neoliberal practices—such as barter or trueque—as survival strategies for popular classes. This sort of economic and cultural relation is distinctive to precarized industries in the context of a radical global change—the brutal concentration of wealth, the gradual disappearance of middle class, the growing marginalized communities, what Sassen describes as new forms of social expulsion—and can be observed in actual Argentinian comics’ field. So, from this perspective, the brutal crisis also implies peculiar strategies—economic, cultural, discursive—that would not exist in prosperous realities, basically because they would not be necessary there. Having made these clarifications, I will focus on the relationship between these issues and the discussions on gender and dissidence. I will start with Wittig’s reading of heterosexuality (2006) as an oppressive political regime, against which LGBTIQ+ identities act as deserters. It is also necessary to retrieve Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality (1991), which dialogues with the concerns presented by post-colonial feminisms. Crenshaw points out that women’s violence is not only gendered but also racialized, and this intersection of dimensions produces particular forms of violence. She points out that sexuality and class also intersect with gender and race, making it necessary to understand the origins of violence from a multiple perspective: “I see my work as part of a larger collective effort by feminists of all colors to expand feminism to include analysis of race and other factors such as class, sexual orientation and age” (Crenshaw 1991, 89). Although the problems she studies focus on black women in the United States, this approach is valid for thinking about the Latin American realities of women and sexual dissidences, which are not only racialized but also affected by social class and marginality determined by the recurrent economic crisis. On a discursive level, it is pertinent to highlight her use of (complex, intersecting) otherness as a mark of identity, stressing the possibility of subverting difference “into a source of political empowerment and social reconstruction” (Crenshaw 1991, 88); also pointing out that ignoring these intersections threatens the place of enunciation for these subjects: “when identity is presented in practice as a question of either being a ‘woman’ or being a ‘person of color’, as if it were an ‘either/ or’ proposition, we are relegating the identity of women of color to a place of no discourse” (Crenshaw 1991, 88). In this regard, she analyzes structural intersectionality—referring to the intersectional position of black women, which means that violence is qualitatively different from that of white women; and political intersectionality—referring to the forms of exclusion of these intersections within the feminist and anti-racist policies of the time. Structural intersectionality surrounds our discussion if we bear in mind the qualitative differences that violence

204  Laura Cristina Fernández against trans, non-binary and/or poor people entails in relation to other social subjects of violence identified with another race or social class. Thus, these multiple identities—which are also the object of multiple violence—this diverse tapestry woven by different kinds of exclusions, can also be constituted as enclaves of empowerment, resistance, and political struggle, which implies not only revising patriarchal mandates but also dismantling the beliefs imposed by white Western paradigm and neoliberalism. I understand that the particular economic and cultural forms of oppression also present specific critical responses, compelling us to reconsider Western and white feminism, to redefine ourselves from subalternity, counter-hegemony in a decolonial feminism, i.e., one that understands that racism, colonialism, and capitalism are intimately connected to modern hetero-patriarchy. In this regard, it is worth mentioning some thoughts of Gloria Anzaldúa, as a queer Chicana, in 1987. She referred to the “sexual duality” condemned by the patriarchal gaze and problematized it both from the imaginary (and) practices of native communities and from the hybrid reality in which the author positioned herself: There is something irresistible in being both male and female, in having access to both worlds. Contrary to some psychiatric dogmas, half and halves do not suffer from a confusion of sexual identity, or a confusion of gender. What we suffer from is an absolute despotic duality that says we are only capable of being one or the other. It is claimed that human nature is limited and cannot evolve into something better. But I, like other queer people, am two in one body, both male and female. I am the embodiment of hieros gamos: the union of opposites in one being. (Anzaldúa quoted in Hooks et al. 2004, 75–75) Anzaldúa refers to interstices as the spaces inhabited by the identity of women of colour. However, she considers it a limit, not necessarily a subversive means: for her, the interstice is the margin of action that is allowed to those who are “aliens” in the eyes of dominant culture. The question would be, then, how we can redefine the interstice as a space of filtering and gradual fissuring of cis hegemonic discourses; how we might subvert a limiting concept of our realities to build it into a strategy for change, to foster other imaginaries that move beyond the norm. In a local context, the role of dissident narratives in comics can be seen as examples of this. It is pertinent to inscribe queer discourses as ways of resisting or as disruptive locus for both bourgeois heteronormative thinking and for the solipsistic notion in the cultural field. In this regard, Anna (2014) refers to “camp” as a queer strategy of political resistance, quoting Moe Meyer: What “queer” signals is an ontological challenge that displaces bourgeois notions of the Self as unique, abiding, and continuous while substituting instead a concept of the Self as performative, improvisational, discontinuous and processually constituted by repetitive and stylized acts. (Anna 2004, para. 36)

Crises, New Modalities and Emergence of LGBTIQ+ Discourses 205

Dissident identities: From the margins to institutional agendas After each period of economic, social and political rupture, comics made by young people found possibilities of existence in different poor image formats. In the case of the dismantling of the local comics industry in the 1990s, the response was the growth of fanzine production. After the so-called “2001 crisis,” weblogs began to become popular, such as Historietas Reales, where several young authors also began to show their work without being limited by the filters of the press and traditional publishers. In the last peak of the crisis (2016–2018), some independent production strategies that were already integrated into the comics field, articulated to the feminist political and social discourse—materialized in the “Ni una menos” movement. Although feminist comics had appeared in the last years, the protests against femicides and the marches for the right to access legal, safe, and free abortion prompted many young women who were not comics artists to get involved in graphic activism. Alongside this, the visibility of trans-inclusive feminism in spaces devoted to popular struggles meant opening the debate about life conditions of LGBTIQ+ people. Until the 2000s, the field of Argentine comics was notably sexist in its composition. This was not only found in the stereotypical representations of women and LGBTIQ+ people already mentioned above, but also in the hegemonic position of male creators within said industry. By opening up to alternative channels of distribution, authors not only avoided local editorial filters but also the selection processes supervised by the cishet male gaze. The digital format—also open and free—offered visibility for emerging authors, as well as the possibility of expanding audiences to other countries. Collaborative networks were born between artists in Latin America, which dynamized circuits, practices, and renewed imaginaries. In addition to Chicks on Comics, other groups of female authors emerged from web platforms and social networks: Vacación Comics (2013–2014); Línea Peluda (collective of female illustrators, professional or amateur, since 2018); Vamos las Pibas Festival (2017); among others. In terms of transinclusive feminist topics, it is also important to highlight the role played by the magazine Clítoris (2011–2012) and its anthologies (2014 and 2017, published by Hotel de las Ideas). All these experiences operate as records and influences for some of the projects and events that we consider most significant for the visualization of young LGBTIQ+ authors. The first case I will refer to is Secuencia Disidente, a group that arose as a necessity for queer authors who could not find a place to publish their work, as well as feeling isolated as workers. In 2017, an open call was made by a Facebook group: the initial aim was to survey authors, exchange experiences and plan strategies to visualize their work. There was a great response as young people from all over the country got in touch, raising similar problems. Soon the publication page was created under the premise “LGBTIQ+ comics by LGBTIQ+ authors, for all eyes.”6 The webpage posted the work of both amateur authors and those already recognized in the field (such as Rubén Gauna). Among the founders were Patricio Plaza, Patricio Oliver, Paula Boffo, Constanza Oroza,

206  Laura Cristina Fernández Agustina Cassot and Luciano Vecchio (who was already publishing Sereno, the story of a gay superhero, for the site Totem Comics). In a more recent post, Vecchio emphasized the importance of creating community: (…) the project emerged from a driving impulse at the end of 2017, riding the momentum of several events and publications caused LGBTIQ+ comics artists to start to gather, get to know each other, share and start to banish the ghost of being alone or scattered in a mostly cisheteronormative, if not entirely macho, field. (Vecchio 2019) He also stressed that the group was “a register-archive-sampler-catalogue of more than 50 LGBT+ comic artists and their works” but also a necessary statement at the time, a demarcation to position themselves and say: “here we are, this is our cultural production, there are a lot of us, and we are growing in number” (Vecchio 2019). The site really drove production with surprising vigour in the midst of the economic crisis of 2018—a year in which they even managed to publish an anthology. During the two years of the site’s intense activity, internal debates were raised about the homophobic and transphobic archetypes installed in the imaginary of the local comics field. In this regard, Oliver commented: For me, having a hero like Sereno is more than significant, because we grew up in a time when THE hero for many was Cazador, who embodied a whole series of characteristics that always made me feel unrepresented and even attacked. Cazador starts in a gay march where both, the villain of the day and he, indiscriminately massacre everyone in the parade. And of course, the representation is parodic and mocking. (Perucca 2018)7 This also opened a window to address invisibilized issues within the already existing invisibilization, such as abortion for trans men (“Nosotrxs también abortamos,” 2018). It is common to evade dogmatic criteria on the language of comics in these publications, intermingling comics, illustrations, humor strips and even memes. The last posts on the page are from October 2020, related to the SOMOS competition awards. The discontinuation of the group’s activities in the networks is likely due to the fact that between 2017 and 2020, other spaces for LGBTIQ+ narratives in the agendas of cultural institutions—both public and private—have grown significantly: museums, competitions, large and small publishers started to include works related to these issues. Another experience is the Historieta LGBTI contest, organized by the Municipality of Rosario, Santa Fe, in 2018. Rosario is one of the centres of comics production and circulation in Argentina, where one of the most important festivals (Crack Bang Boom) is held annually (it includes mainstream productions as well as independent comics and fanzines). Most of the selected works belonged to authors who were already becoming known within the local independent circuit.8 I classify

Crises, New Modalities and Emergence of LGBTIQ+ Discourses 207 them into three groups: those that narrate an everyday relationship between two LGBTIQ+ people, as a kind of slice of life genre; those that revisit the idea of romantic love, overturning the heteronormative model for two people of the same sex; and those that consider sexuality as a political position. I will focus on the latter, which I consider the richest in terms of discourse production. “La vida es corta,” which alludes to the lesbian slogan “La vida es corta, hacete torta” (“Life is short, become a dyke”), by Julia Barata and María Ibarra, presents us with a testimonial account of a young woman who has found in her sexual identity a space for rebellion: “I never thought that someone could become a lesbian as a political act. If only I had known in high school … when I wanted to be a lesbian with all my strength” (Barata and Ibarra quoted in Novia et al. 2018, 60–61). The character recalls situations from adolescence in which men objectified women and the young women themselves submitted to the aesthetic mandates and “the way things are supposed to be” according to the patriarchy. She even shows that such violence still exists in her everyday life—“Which of the two is the man?,” “Ouch, what a wicked dyke!” (Barata and Ibarra quoted in Novia et al. 2018, 64)—, but LGBTIQ+ militant space also means being part of an embracing community: I always felt invisible, and I felt that others wanted me to disappear. And even though I wasn’t fully aware … I knew it was a trap. For me and for all of us. The trap they were setting for us with romantic love. With compulsory motherhood. And above all with our own hatred. They made us hate ourselves and the others. (…) They silenced us by killing us. Erasing us from history. They silenced many. But they couldn’t get to all of us. (Barata and Ibarra quoted in Novia et al. 2018, 64–69) The text refers not only to personal aspects but mainly to social and political circumstances: in addition to reflecting the constant problem of femicides/ feminicides, at that time, there was still a struggle for the decriminalization of abortion. The work also places strong emphasis on the case of “Higui” (Analía de Jesús), a lesbian woman who in 2016, trying to defend herself from a gang rape, killed one of her aggressors. Higui, who spent several months in prison, was released but not absolved. Higui’s case is the subject of Nacha Vollenweider’s work “Sabelo que sí,” part of this anthology. The comic by Maia Debowicz and Lucas Fauno Gutiérrez, “Receta para ser una drag queer” (2018), considers queer identity as a subversive response, and its supposed “no place” as a strategy of empowerment and positive reappropriation of sexist insults: “‘And what are you,’ they despair and ask. ‘A faggot with a wig’, I reply, taking away any power of aggression over me” (Debowicz and Gutiérrez 2018, 33). Furthermore, this work highlights the margin as a not only sexual space, but also political and social, by inscribing itself as “a Sailor Moon of the conurbano trash” (Debowicz and Gutiérrez 2018, 32). The Buenos Aires conurbano is also a demonized construction in media discourses, shown as a place of crime, poverty, and outcasts. The third discursive line concerns their struggles: their costumes and make-up are not presented as elements of seduction,

208  Laura Cristina Fernández but as “war paint”: “Make-up as a tribal mask, post-apocalyptic, neither neat nor seductive, preferably as a warrior” (Debowicz and Gutiérrez 2018, 31). It is remarkable how the signs of permanent crisis as a vital space are found both in the positive redefinition of what is demonized by the neoliberal narrative, and in the resignification of “survival” as a political and social struggle. Another meaningful event was the already mentioned SOMOS award. In July 2020, under the new Peronist administration (Frente de Todos), an illustration and comics contest with LGBTIQ+ themes was organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the law on egalitarian marriage in Argentina. On this occasion, the call for entries was international and extended to graphic arts, in general. The selection criteria were much more diverse on a formal and narrative level: some works showed a polished and professional aesthetic, but a large part of the selection was amateurish. In terms of narrative and discourse, the chosen comics generally played with the idea of an intimate or testimonial diary; while other works were closer to institutional illustration (in fact, the winning works belong to this group). There even were some works of denouncement. This last group includes the works by Flora Nómada and Agustina Casot, relating to the case of Marian Gómez (a young woman who was prosecuted for resisting authority, following a case of discrimination when the police overreacted to her kissing her wife in a public space); the illustration by Rouse, related to the claims for trans labour rights and the comic strip by Mariana Baizán, which denounces the invisibilization of transvesticides. These events, of course, are just a few samples of the actions in which individual and collective work of LGBTIQ+ authors are central, many of whom have created their own self-publishing projects: Eleonora Kortsarz, Constanza Oroza, Agustina Cassot, Nikka (Verónica García), Femimutancia (Julia Mamone), Mir Uberti, Sukermercado (Paula Boffo), among others.

You might not make a living from drawing, but you can make of drawing a way of life and activism When making a living from drawing comics is the exception, doing them is, above all, an aesthetic-political decision. In these realities in crisis, they have become a strategy for critique and rupture towards what is imposed, or just an attempt to make one’s own existence visible. But this apparently simple act can be revulsive, especially when that existence is identified by hegemonic paradigms as “the other,” “the weird,” “the undesirable.” Therefore, networks are built between authors who try to turn this marginalization or invisibility into an aesthetic-political stance, into a community of support for the production of these discourses and into a re-evaluation in positive terms of otherness—the otherness of sexual identity, but also against white and Western norms, against mandates of consumption—; in hybrid, conflictive and critical contexts, marked by collective traumas that combine particular aspects to this otherness. From addressing dissident sexual identity, many of the works we have referenced also engage with the deconstruction of beauty stereotypes (fatphobia,

Crises, New Modalities and Emergence of LGBTIQ+ Discourses 209 ageism) within LGBTIQ+ narratives. This denotes the depth to which certain constructions of the “desirable” (feminine and masculine) have penetrated our visual culture globally, such as those recurring stereotypes of lesbians as “sex bombs” initially intended for hetero-male audiences, which have been replicated as assumptions of “inclusion” in current mainstream youth-oriented narratives (e.g., The Boys TV series). We could also find several contemporary examples of gay characters who respond to the white, Apollonian paradigm. In this sense, independent comics have a discursive advantage in being able to act outside certain market-imposed imaginaries of beauty. In addition to extending the critique of beauty stereotypes, this phenomenon has meant that publishers and institutions in general have had to reformulate their policies to include these diverse voices. Of course, much remains to be done, the vestiges of homophobia and misogyny emerge sporadically, and some publishers edit LGBTIQ+ authors more out of agenda-driven interest than ideological convictions, but undoubtedly, the growth of narratives on sexual dissidence has subverted practices and imaginaries of the Argentine comics scene in a very short time.

Notes 1. The green scarf has been a symbol of the fight for legal, safe, and free abortion since 2005. In response to the presentation of the abortion project law in 2018, Catholic rightwing groups began to use a light blue scarf in the rallies and other types of imagery that I would describe as “cheesy-creepy” (a giant foam rubber fetus or plastic “baby” dolls hanging from balconies). The tradition of the scarves in Argentina refers back to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, establishing visual analogies between both symbols. 2. Source: Mujeres de la Matria Latinoamericana (MuMaLá). https://www.facebook. com/MumalaNacional/. 3. Formed by Powerpaola (Colombia), Sole Otero, Clara Lagos, Caro Chinaski and Delius (Argentina), Lilly and Ulla Loge (Germany), Bas Baker and Maartje Schalkx (Netherlands). 4. I refer here only to the first period of Fierro magazine, in Ediciones de la Urraca. There is a second one, between 2006 and 2019, and a third one, from 2020 to the present. 5. All translations of quotes in this chapter have been done by the author. 6. Flyer of the Secuencia Disidente Facebook webpage. https://www.facebook. com/secuenciadisidente/photos/p.151268818914970/151268818914970/ ?type=1&theater. 7. Cazador is an Argentine comic created by Jorge Lucas et al., very popular in the 1990s: the main character is a misogynist, homophobic and ultra-nationalist superhero. 8. Following a similar editorial policy, in 2019, the same publishing house released another anthology called Poder Trans, a selection of 22 works by Latin American authors.

References Abdalá, Verónica. 2017. “Maitena: Soy una guerrera temerosa.” Clarín, August 30, 2017. https://www.clarin.com/cultura/guerrera-temerosa_0_BkZ9r3NYW.html. Anna T. 2014. “The opacity of queer languages.” E-Flux Journal, no. 60 (December). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/60/61064/the-opacity-of-queer-languages/.

210  Laura Cristina Fernández Contrera, Laura and Nicolás Cuello. 2016. Cuerpos sin patrones. Resistencias desde las geografías desmesuradas de la carne. Buenos Aires: Madreselva. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, no. 6 (July): 1241–1299. Cuello, Nicolás and Lucas Disalvo. 2020. Ninguna línea recta. Contracultura punk y políticas sexuales en Argentina 1984–2007. Buenos Aires: Tren en Movimiento. Debowicz, Maia and Lucas Fauno Gutiérrez. 2018. “Receta para ser una drag queer.” In Historieta LGBTI, edited by Natalia Novia et al., 27–38. Rosario: EMR. Espinosa Miñoso, Yuderkys, Diana Gómez Correal and Karina Ochoa Muñoz. 2014. Tejiendo de otro modo: Feminismo, epistemología y apuestas descoloniales en Abya Yala. Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca. Feminismo Gráfico. 2019. Nosotras contamos. Un recorrido por la obra de autoras de Historieta y Humor Gráfico de ayer y hoy. Exhibition catalogue. Buenos Aires: Lat Fem. Gago, Verónica. 2017. Neoliberalism from Below. Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies. London: Duke University Press. Hooks, Bell, Avtar Brah, Chela Sandoval and Gloria Anzaldúa. 2004. Otras inapropiables. Feminismos desde las fronteras. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños. Linke, Kai. 2021. Good White Queers? Racism and Whiteness in Queer U.S. Comics. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Longoni, Ana and Mariano Mestman. 2010. Del Di Tella a “Tucumán Arde.” Vanguardia artística y política en el 68 argentino. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Novia, Natalia et al. 2018. Historieta LGBTI. Rosario: EMR. Perucca, Pedro. 2018. “Historietistas LGBTIQ+: Quisiéramos allanar el camino a nuevas voces y generaciones. (Entrevista a Luciano Vecchio y Patricio Oliver).” Sonámbula. Cultura y lucha de clases, November, 2018. https://sonambula.com.ar/historietistaslgbtiq-quisieramos-allanar-el-camino-a-nuevas-voces-y-generaciones/. Press, Andrea and Francesca Tripodi. 2013. Feminism in a Postfeminist World. London: Routledge. Richard, Nelly. 2013. Crítica y política. Santiago de Chile: Palinodia. Robbins, Trina. 1999. From Girls to Grrlz: A History of Women’s Comics from Teens to Zines. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Steyerl, Hito. 2009. “In defense of the poor image.” E-flux Journal 10 (November). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/. Vallejos, Soledad. 2006. “‘El mundo en un papel’ (Entrevista a Patricia Breccia).” Página 12, November 17, 2006. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/las12/133011-2006-11-17.html. Vecchio, Luciano. 2019. “Secuencia Disidente: Bisagra y Retrospectiva.” Facebook, July 15, 2019. https://es-la.facebook.com/secuenciadisidente/posts/378901892818327?__ tn__=K-R. VV.AA. SOMOS. 2020. Exhibition catalogue. Buenos Aires: Museo del Bicentenario. Williams, Rosalind. 2012. “The Rolling Apocalypse of Contemporary History.” In Aftermath: The Cultures of the Economic Crisis, edited by Manuel Castells, Joao Caraca and Gustavo Cardoso. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://hdl.handle. net/1721.1/107660. Wittig, Monique. 2006. El pensamiento heterosexual y otros ensayos. Madrid: EGALES.

14 Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream) Julia C. Gómez Sáez

Introduction The fate of the thousands of Africans that drown every year in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach the coast of Europe is given a tepid coverage by the media. In spite of being a subject mentioned in almost every political debate, the European stance tends to be deliberately ambiguous about this drama, whose magnitude is often interpreted as an “invasion,” and politically instrumentalized to disseminate a message of fear by right-wing populist movements (Spini 2019, 135–138). Among these dramatic human stories, one strongly resonated in the year 2012: the young Somalian runner Samia Yusuf Omar, who had participated in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, drowned just six months before the next Olympic competition. Omar came into the spotlight when she participated in the qualifying round for the 200 metres race: she was the skinny girl wearing a huge worn t-shirt and second-hand sneakers who arrived last—nine seconds after the winner, the muscular and powerful Jamaican runner Veronica CampbellBrown. Yet, Omar’s determination to finish the race was heartily cheered by the public, as if she was indeed the winner (Kravtsov 2011). Just from that beginning, Samia Yusuf Omar’s story is full of contrasts: her appearance versus one of the professional athletes against whom she competed, or her participation in a dazzling international sports event such as the Olympics aimed at the promotion of peace and freedom worldwide versus her povertystricken daily life in her hometown Mogadishu dominated by violent jihadist groups waging war and oppression. Her decision to leave her country and her family and travel north to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search for the opportunities she lacked is what configures her personal story and her tragic end, yet her youth dreams of success and improvement of her living conditions could be universally transposed to the experiences of many other young people looking for a place in the world. And yet, the path she travelled is trodden by myriads of sub-Saharan Africans who undertake this same terrifying journey every year. Omar’s story combines the personal side of the Olympic athlete trying to reach her goal of individual achievement with the universal experience as the DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-20

212  Julia C. Gómez Sáez migrant she became. In fact, her death is no different from the one met by these nameless and faceless Africans whose voices are silenced forever, hence their stories cannot be told first-hand, and are lost but for the mediated narratives of the creators that lend their voices to become their advocates. Because of all these specificities in Omar’s story, hers has become an object of interest from an ethical, artistic, and journalistic point of view by a number of European artists who have decided to channel her voice, presumably with the objective of paying a tribute, but also of raising awareness about the heart-breaking issue of the migrant crisis in which her death happened. How to handle such a delicate subject with the correct dose of emotion, respect, and accuracy? In the next sections, we will discuss the particular case of the graphic biography An Olympic Dream by Reinhard Kleist, describing both its main features and the approach adopted by the author, and comparing it when appropriate to the work of the novelist Giuseppe Catozzella, with the aim of analyzing whether their respective works fulfil the objective of building a distinctive voice for Omar and which are the implications this construction has.

Main features of An Olympic Dream by Reinhard Kleist With An Olympic Dream, the German graphic novelist Reinhard Kleist repeats a formula that he already explored in his most successful works: biographies with a monochrome treatment, a style that he developed in Cash: I See a Darkness (2006), dedicated to the American singer Johnny Cash, and also in Castro (2010), about the Cuban leader Fidel Castro. These were followed by The Boxer: The True Story of Holocaust Survivor Harry Taft (2014), in Kleist’s first attempt of narrating refugee and survivor experiences in “a subfield of graphic life narratives that uses sequential hand-drawn comics (…) to intervene in the photographic regime of the migrant as Other” (Rifkind 2017, 648) for the biography of the Polish boxer Hertzko Haft. In his award-winning An Olympic Dream, for the first and single time in his production, Kleist delves into the biographical story of a young black woman, with whom he does not share ethnicity, age, culture, origins, experience, or gender, so his account is forcibly mediated by his external perspective. In the following sections, we will comment on the main tools Kleist uses to build a voice for Samia Yusuf Omar from a certain distance and with a very clear goal in mind: using Omar’s tragic story as a humanizing example to educate and inform Western readers about the hardships of sub-Saharan Africans who flee their continent trying to cross the sea, in a biography which “not only portray(s) individual lives, but ultimately encourage(s) reflections on similar stories that may remain untold” (Albiero 2019, 6). As explained in his foreword, Kleist’s major sources of documentation, apart from the information publicly available, were mainly Theresa Krug, whom Omar befriended while in Somalia (Krug 2016) and who advised both Reinhard Kleist and Giuseppe Catozzella in the making of their respective biographies, and

Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream)  213 Hodan Omar, one of Omar’s older sisters who herself made the journey crossing the Mediterranean and with whom both authors had a personal contact thanks to Krug. Additionally, Kleist worked interviewing survivor refugees, whose stories are also present in his work.

Paratextual features Right from the beginning, the educational aim of this graphic biography is stated by its compositive preliminary elements (Huston 2015). The potential reader will be confronted by a cover in the distinctive brick colour representing the running track in which a figure stands out: the one of the young Somalian runner depicted in the crucial moment when she crossed the finish line in the Beijing Olympic Games. She is opposed to three spooky hooded jihadists heavily armed, represented in a faint grey, almost blended with the background, visually establishing the contrast mentioned before. In the first pages, as Albiero highlights in her discussion about this work, “Kleist uses different strategies to foreground the reality of Samia’s life, positioning it within factual paratexts” (Albiero 2019, 10). The reader first finds a contextualizing map that describes the journey undertaken by Samia Yusuf Omar from her hometown Mogadishu in Somalia to the Libyan coast, and the line marking her physical journey through Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Libya just to the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, where she was drowned. In his preface, Kleist explains the situation of the Africans trying to cross the sea and his personal relation with the story of Omar; his stages of documentation; and the research carried out in Italian refugee camps. Although the paratextual material aims for the factual, Kleist does not hide the fact that “I used my imagination to depict how people would handle this situation, how they would think and feel, how they would react. And many of the real events related here are, for a European like me, quite incomprehensible” (Kleist 2016, 7). The four chapters that compose the graphic account are separated by a blank page which imposes a physical marker to a change in the perspective of the narration developed, particularly in the case of the f irst and last chapters, as the two central ones maintain their temporal and spatial continuity in which Omar is the f irst-person narrator. According to Lefèvre’s explanation of Nichols’ conceptual scheme, K leist transitions between the observational, the performative, and the participatory documentary modes (Lefèvre 2013). For the final contents of the book, the German and the English editions include two different afterwords (Kleist 2015). The first one is written by Elias Bierdel, a German journalist working in the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution (ASPR), and the second one is penned by Teresa Krug, Omar’s journalist friend. As Albiero discusses, “the gesture towards journalism adds a new layer of objectivity to the work of storytelling” (Albiero 2019, 11).

214  Julia C. Gómez Sáez On his part, Catozzella’s work is not so factually contextualized in his paratextual presentation, which clearly gives the idea of an intention by the novelist very different than Kleist’s. In the various editions of his novel, the cover depicts alternatively a yellow butterfly or a pastel-toned photograph of an unknown little black girl standing backwards holding a toy plane, an image much less linked with Omar’s biography than the material presented by Kleist. At the end of the book, Catozzella writes an afterword explaining why he decided to write this novel and detailing his documentary sources, which, in fact, are very similar to the ones used by Kleist, although there is no other link between their respective works. There is also a brief biographical note dedicated to Omar’s death. Finally, Catozzella adds a glossary of the Somalian terms profusely used through his novel to bestow the narration with a certain exotic tone. The only visual support are two black and white photographs of Omar and her niece, Manaar.

Stylistic features Kleist chooses to present Omar’s biography with a black-and-white treatment, with a distinctive semiotic use of the intermediate grey. In that sense, Kleist’s approach can be associated with a similar tradition of biographical and autobiographical comics like Maus or Persepolis, or authors such as Joe Sacco. His choice for monochromatism in Omar’s story is absolutely intentional, as it can be proven by the colour treatment he has chosen for his soon-to-be published biography of David Bowie, Starman—as opposed to An Olympic Dream, Starman is fully drawn with vivid, saturated colours representing David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust years. When Reyns-Chikuma and Ben Lazreg list the reasons why Marjane Satrapi used monochromatism in her work, apart from presenting it as an alternative to commercial publications in colour, they mention another reason that can also be applied to Kleist’s work: “(…) black and white was used (…) because, like Maus and Schindler’s List, Persepolis deals with historical trauma that is expressed in black and white to avoid glossy colors that might trivialize the gravity of the events” (Reyns-Chikuma and Ben Lazreg 2018, 410). The hardships of forced migration and the starkness of the landscapes represented—poverty-stricken Mogadishu, the arid Sahara desert, or war-ravaged Tripoli—favour this blackand-white treatment. As Ludewig comments, the readers can speculate about “why Kleist draws in black and white rather than in color. Does this choice harken back to journalistic black-and-white photography or does it, on the contrary, highlight the semi-fictional character of the events?” (Ludewig 2016, 235). Interestingly, it seems Kleist attains both things with his monochromatic treatment, in a similar way as the disaster scenes represented by Joe Sacco: his realistic black-and-white landscapes could perfectly come out of the journalistic realm, but his use of grey to highlight or tone down his characters adds vividness to the actions represented.

Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream)  215 In that sense, another distinctive aspect of Kleist’s art is a constant play between sharpness and vagueness of the facial and physical traits of his characters depending on their importance or location in a given scene: characters in the forefront or speaking characters will tend to have more defined features, as opposed to the crowd surrounding them. This mechanism is used to emphasize or tone down Omar’s individuality against the background people or her travel companions, thus generating an individualized or generalized message as appropriate. As Varillas explains about creation of characters using McCloud examples (Varillas 2009, 50), Kleist makes an effective use of the abstraction of his characters to trigger an emotional reaction in his readers (see Figure 14.1). Omar is dramatically separated from her aunt, who accompanies her on part of her journey, and is forced to continue alone. Kleist marks the beginning of her solitary struggle and the loss of her emotional support by abstracting her features in her hurried escape—she draws her in white with a blank face while she escapes among the greyed crowd—but he represents all her facial features in the close-ups. The process of abstraction arrives at its peak in the last panel of the page, in which an Omar represented in just a few lines epitomizes her own despair. To convey a certain rhythm to his account, Kleist makes use of an array of panels with and without frame aimed at stopping, slowing, or speeding up the narration: the unframed panels are used, e.g., for panoramic scenes, to represent an important moment in a certain page—normally surrounded by framed panels—or to mark a change of perspective in conversations. On the contrary, Kleist uses the framed panels for close-ups and to moderate the reading rhythm, as it happens in the epilogue described in the next section.

Intermedial references Apart from the intrinsic hybrid nature of graphic works, An Olympic Dream contains a high level of audiovisuality—Kleist makes use of the depiction of various audiovisual media to convey his message with different intentions in mind. First of all, the audiovisual representation allows him to impose a certain distance between the real events and the story which is being narrated, and his voice and Omar’s. Second, his aim for the factual is also patent in the use of audiovisual media such as TV, Facebook or YouTube, which purportedly convey real and objective facts in a journalistic way, as Bolter and Grusin affirm in their definition of a medium: “it is that which appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real” (Bolter and Grusin 2020, 65). Additionally, if, as Lefèvre claims, comics can be associated with “slow journalism” (Lefèvre 2013, 52), these other media represented compensate for the slowness by conveying a brisker rhythm to the narration. Finally, the use of social media offers Kleist the possibility of aiming for a young readership, which reinforces again the educational nature of this work.

216  Julia C. Gómez Sáez

Figure 14.1  Omar’s separation from her aunt. Source: Kleist (2016, 67).

Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream)  217 We see an example of the use of television in the opening chapter, when Omar’s family in Mogadishu watches her running at the Olympics in Beijing thanks to an old TV set at a neighbour’s house. Kleist draws the TV retransmission of the race, a factual event, interspersed with what he imagines happened to her circle of friends when the event took place. To this effect, Kleist also establishes a graphic contrast between the two representations: the TV sports commentator allocution is inserted in square-shaped captions, or balloons with an irregular frame, to mark the difference between the action that takes place in China and the one among the spectators in Somalia, between the facts of Omar’s race in television, depicted using exclusively black and white, and the imagined scene of Omar’s relatives, which is represented with a generous use of the nuancing grey. Additionally, Kleist gets to show his readers the social significance of having a TV in a place like Mogadishu, which is another indirect way of informing them about the social situation of his characters. In the second and third chapters, the omniscient narrator disappears in favour of a first-person account incarnated by Omar with an interesting feature: her Facebook entries to her fans. From that moment on, we can picture the character of the young woman answering the Facebook status question: “What’s on your mind, Samia?” As Albiero explains, “these posts serve a double purpose: on the one hand, they give a voice to Samia, and, on the other, they frame the narrative and provide contextual information to the reader” (Albiero 2019, 12). As explained by Kleist in his preface, Omar did post a lot of information for her fans on Facebook, but it was deleted, so he was forced to fictionalize most of it. He creates his captions imitating the style of the Facebook window for the status entries, using the Facebook printed typography to differentiate these postings, presumably written by Omar, from the direct conversations between the characters, which appear in handwritten capital letters. The combination of two potential target groups of audience—the fictional one represented by Omar fans reading her posts, and the real one, i.e., Kleist readers—is used by the author as another step to create a much-needed distance between his own voice and that of the character he is fictionalizing. In the fourth chapter, Kleist composes a graphic epilogue depicting a YouTube video dated August 9, 2012, in which the former Somalian athlete Abdi Bile gives a mournful speech in which he discloses Samia Yusuf Omar’s fate (Mohamed 2012). Abdi Bile images are intercalated with panels explicitly representing Omar drowning. The effect of this intermedial representation (Rippl and Etter 2015, 196) is a peculiar one: Kleist abandons the first-person narrator—Omar, whose last appearance depicts her allegorically crossing the line first at an imagined race at the Olympics—to introduce himself in the graphic narration—or, better said, a hypothetical reader who is looking for information about Samia Yusuf Omar. What the reader will see in these three black-bordered pages is Kleist’s computer screen—it can be his or the reader’s oneself, creating a mirror image between one another—and he uses

218  Julia C. Gómez Sáez the YouTube search bar to look for the video. The second and third pages are composed of 2 × 4-squared panels. Kleist uses framed panels depicting Abdi Bile speaking and unframed ones representing Omar’s boat. Nevertheless, the account of the events is, once again, indirect: only Omar’s hands are seen trying to reach the ropes of an Italian rescue boat and, finally, her flowered headscarf floating in the Mediterranean waters. With this reference to the YouTube video and its potential viewers incarnating himself and his readership at the same time, Kleist shows once again his goal of speaking to his readers in an understandable language while he triggers their empathy for the situation of the migrants crossing the Mediterranean in general, and Omar’s tragedy in particular.

Time and space management The time span covered by Kleist goes from August 2008—Omar’s race in Beijing—to April 2012—Omar’s death. The first chapter places the reader in Mogadishu just before Omar’s race. Kleist’s narration thus begins in a very indirect manner, which, as we have already seen, is a distinguishing trait throughout Omar’s biography. The second chapter, mainly aimed at illustrating Omar’s background, covers her return to Somalia and her life there during the following years until she decides to leave her country and go to the neighbouring Ethiopia in search of better opportunities to train. The third and longest chapter is dedicated to the journey she undertakes, which starts in July 2011—a year before the London Olympics, as Omar explicitly says on a Facebook caption in page 59. This chapter finishes with Omar’s death nine months later, in April 2012, allegorically represented by Kleist with an image of a happy Omar crossing the finishing line. The graphic epilogue is dedicated to the depiction of the YouTube video of Abdi Bile already discussed. As Albiero points out, “by interjecting Abdi Bile’s commemorative words of Samia’s tragic destiny with scenes that represent Samia as a runner and a refugee, Kleist gives factual and emotional closure to the story” (2019, 11). Nevertheless, this linear story is dotted by a number of external analepses (as defined by Bartual 2020, 153) referring to events that happened before the beginning of the story aimed at contextualizing Omar’s former life in Mogadishu. Kleist makes use of these silent flashbacks, for example, to represent the character of Omar’s father and explain his assassination or to show the moment when Hodan Omar abandons Mogadishu to undertake the journey towards Europe. We find another fine example full of symbolism in which Kleist shows his artful skill depicting landscapes and his background as a graphic designer on page 39 (see Figure 14.2) with a series of three panoramic static depictions intertwined with Omar’s Facebook captions. On this page, Kleist chooses the Mogadishu Stadium to illustrate the history of the city connected with Omar’s personal story (Amanor 2018). As Varillas explains, these kind of presumed

Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream)  219

Figure 14.2  The Mogadishu stadium as a representation of Somalia history. Source: Kleist (2016, 39).

220  Julia C. Gómez Sáez narrative pauses in comics not only describe but also comment and tell a story (2009, 78). Once again, Kleist makes use of the indirect representation to convey in a few words and images the history of a country ravaged by decades of violent wars and, in doing so, also temporally contextualizes the story he is narrating. On the other hand, the internal analepsis we recurrently find throughout Kleist’s work is Omar’s experience at the Beijing Olympics: she recalls her Olympic performance while training on pages 26 and 27, and she is also depicted happy in the opening ceremony of the Olympics on page 41 and later on in 114. This is represented as the peak in Omar’s career and life, and Kleist decides to equalize her death to her completion as a winner of a hypothetical race at the London Olympics she would never arrive to. On his part, Catozzella chooses a wider temporal framework that begins when Omar has just turned eight, in 2000, eight years before her participation in the Olympics. Therefore, he is forced to fictionalize all these childhood years. There are no remarkable flashbacks in Catozzella’s linear plot: all the important events highlighted by Kleist as flashbacks take place chronologically in Catozzella’s account. Another consequence of choosing a wider temporal framework is that Catozzella attributes a certain clairvoyance to Omar: right from the beginning, she tells his father that she will become a great athlete and go to the Olympics. Just the opposite as Kleist, as Albiero notes: “Rather than transforming her into some kind of heroic figure, Kleist lets Samia Yusuf Omar emerge as the young athlete and fighter she was” (2019, 11). Apart from its dramatic implications, An Olympic Dream is the account of a journey in which Omar traverses an assortment of different African landscapes: impoverished cities ravaged by war, and the vast immensity of the Sahara Desert. Kleist’s work reveals a detailed visual documentation that can be witnessed in the panoramic representation of cities—such as the opening one of Mogadishu or the last panel on page 99 of Tripoli in flames just after Gaddafi’s death; the stark scenes of the Sahara Desert crossing; or the immensity of the Mediterranean Sea in the last pages of the fourth chapter. Kleist is also extremely careful with the depiction of his backgrounds: a panel that is repeated throughout the book is the figure of Omar normally represented in black or grey in the foreground going into or out of some place depicting a detailed background in white—the street in pages 22 or 37, the stadiums in pages 25 or 49, the plane in page 48, the prison in page 102, the streets of Tripoli in page 105, etc.—in order to locate her in her surroundings. As we have already seen, Kleist makes use of different space techniques to modify the speed of the narration or to intensify the dramatism. One example of this is the silent scene on pages 108 and 109 (see Figure 14.3), in which the boat where Omar embarks is halted and she is arrested and taken once again to Tripoli’s harbour. At that point of the narration, Omar is discouraged and morally devastated. Kleist represents this scene with two pages composed of equally sized panels. The rhythm conveyed is monotonous—Omar is taken to square one of her strenuous Mediterranean crossing. On the first two lines on page 108,

Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream)  221

Figure 14.3  Return to the Libyan coast. Source: Kleist (2016, 108–109).

and on the last one on page 109, Kleist’s panels sweep the scene horizontally to reinforce the inexorable passage of time.

Voice Kleist’s main objective is openly stated at the end of this foreword: I hope that this book will justly portray Samia Yusuf Omar and that her story will raise our consciousness to the fact that behind the news stories there is a refugee issue that needs to be addressed—and that the abstract numbers represent human lives. (Kleist 2016, 7) In fact, this seems to be a typical stance in these graphic refugee biographies, as Mickwitz comments: “The individual’s story presents the pivotal connection between autobiographical traditions in comics and advocacy and campaigns to raise awareness, be it in relation to health or to other social issues and inequalities” (Mickwitz 2020, 463). Of course, this portrayal of a person who, in fact, cannot speak for herself to contest the events depicted raises concerns of ethical representation, which “interweave with the ambition to generate an empathic response. This ambition,

222  Julia C. Gómez Sáez and indeed the very notion of empathy, directs us toward readers. Whose attention is being sought and to what effect are they being addressed and interpellated?” (Mickwitz 2020, 462). As Mickwitz also points out: “The formal construction of comics has been described as acutely congruent with witnessing and trauma and has been credited with inviting readerly positions that are ‘ethically nuanced’” (2020, 459). Kleist takes advantage of his medium to develop this nuanced account. This is even more obvious when comparing it to Catozzella’s work. First of all, Catozzella does not take these precautions of distancing and decides to use a plain first-person narrator: he adopts Omar’s voice and recreates her life and thoughts as if his words were her thoughts and deeds (Radio Città Futura 2014). The writer has to fill in the gaps of Omar’s story for the most important part in a soliloquy: her inner thoughts and feelings. Whereas Kleist makes use of the graphic possibilities of his medium to create a distance and generate a certain objectiveness, Catozzella has obvious problems in giving Omar a credible voice. He applies his own logic to what a young woman should want or think, and the result is simplistic and even misogynistic, and his main character (Omar) is blurred in favour of all the male characters that surround her, in particular, his best friend, Alì, a young boy with whom Omar spends all her time. For example, the following passage makes clear that Catozzella only conceives Omar existence explained in terms of her relationship with her male connections, as being alone is equalized as being inextricably accompanied by a male: I placed my feet on the starting block, the right one and the left, pretending I was alone, that I was at the CONS stadium for a training session with Abdi. Or in the courtyard as a little girl, with Alì checking my feet on the block that Aabe had built from fruit crates. (Catozzella 2017, 144) Ultimately, Catozzella creates the impression that Omar’s decision to leave Somalia is conspicuously motivated because of her friend Alì instead of in the pursuit of her own aspirations. The first-person biographical approach creates a spurious character with a bland personality. In the second half of Catozzella’s novel, once Omar travels north to reach the Mediterranean coast, her advances transform into a plural effort of the group with whom she travels. Both Catozzella and K leist successfully depict the increasing dehumanization these sub-Saharan Africans are exposed to—every leg of the journey is more difficult than the last, as Thomas explains: Having elected to leave, the physical journey exposes migrants to a whole range of dangers precisely because the illegality of the Mediterranean crossing they are poised to attempt heightens their vulnerability. Smugglers and

Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream)  223 human traffickers negotiate the transportation of stowaways and human cargo, navigating makeshift, over-crowded, precarious boats and unseaworthy crafts. (Thomas 2011, 11) At this point, Kleist elaborates an interesting passage between pages 77 and 83, when he gives voice to Omar’s fellow travellers in the crowded jeep taking them across the Sahara by human traffickers. Three men who surround her take turns to tell their personal stories and explain why they decided to cross the desert and, in some cases, reach Europe. Omar’s Facebook captions are replaced by captions without tails acting as speech balloons narrating a hypothetical depiction of the men’s stories with simplified silhouettes whose art recalls the African tribal art. Apparently, Kleist gets here to give voice to his interviewees at Palermo and Lampedusa and their aspirations to attain a better life in Europe, intermingled with the fear of rejection and the unknown, but his iconic depiction of the most literary passage of his work helps to create a disassociation between his own voice and theirs. It is true both Kleist and Catozzella are hesitant when facing some passages extremely violent that would involve, for example, the representation of rapes and tortures—it is unknown whether Omar was raped during her incarceration in Libya, but female migrants “are exposed to rape on every step of their via crucis towards Europe; humanitarian organization list rape as a common occurrence in Libyan facilities” (Spini 2019, 149)—but, again, while Kleist makes use of the graphic support to hint without telling, Catozzella takes an explicit stance and denies what is not known, implying that the other girls were raped, but not Omar, imposing his own moral prejudices to the events he is narrating. Both authors choose to describe Omar’s death in a very similar way—allegorically using the Olympic race as a mystical metaphor of her end: Kleist represents her winning the race, whereas Catozzella uses the starting shot to finish his narration. They seem to be trying to compensate Omar post-humously in exchange for their impersonation, whether well or ill achieved. In this sense, this kind of third-person refugees’ narratives “often visualize difference to educate and advocate; in so doing, they perpetuate the management of ‘empathetic identification’ within neoliberal discourses of human rights—their reading ‘rehearses a form of rescue of the other’” (Rifkind 2017, 649).

Conclusions In the construction of a European common culture, it is essential to consider the experiences not only of the inhabitants of the continent but also of the persons who dwell on their borders. In the last decades, the Mediterranean Sea has become an insurmountable frontier, in which the lives of tens of thousands of humans are lost because of the socioeconomic and geopolitical situation (Varrella 2021).

224  Julia C. Gómez Sáez The victims, such as Samia Yusuf Omar, lose their lives and thus the opportunity to speak by themselves. As much as it would be far better to have the availability of graphic memoirs that “offer much greater complexity, specificity, recursivity, and opportunity for metacommentary” (R if kind 2017, 649–650), the effort the European creators to make sense to this tragic situation can indeed be a good starting point to a wider awareness of the problem, and, even if not perfect, they can help humanize the deceased, who become just numbers of casualties, by way of bestowing them their own human individuality: If narratives can bloom again, if languages, words, and stories can circulate again, if people can learn to identify with characters from beyond their borders, it will assuredly be a first step toward peace. A movement of identification, projection, and compassion. (Waberi 2009, 106) In some cases, the result is disappointing or even damaging, as is the case of Giuseppe Catozzella’s novel, who creates a plain character for Omar in the midst of an affected narrative. Given the spotlight his novel has attained, his work does not precisely help to convey a realistic image of the tragedy, but it feeds the typical clichés of depersonalization and white saviourism, which should be avoided towards heightening critical thinking. On the contrary, Kleist makes use of the possibilities offered by his own medium with its simultaneous use of images and text, and taking his own distancing precautions, he attains to give Omar a voice by way of the techniques mentioned: factual material, a setting up created to maintain a distance between his own voice as a narrator and the inner thoughts of his character, mostly depicted through Facebook postings, and an account with a clear educational aim in mind which looks for a certain objectiveness, even if he also makes a deliberate choice when representing and highlighting certain events. Reinhard Kleist’s approach is a well-conducted effort to present a tragic story such as Omar’s: the graphic novelist unfolds his experience drawing biographies to create a respectful yet powerful account of the last years of the young runner, using techniques reminiscent of photojournalism, interspersed with an array of intermedial references, and a diverted first-person narrator, but without losing the distance that impregnates all his biography. He presents Omar’s experience from a foreign perspective aimed at informing and educating his readers, and his sober visual representation supports this endeavour.

References Albiero, Olivia. 2019. “When Public Figures Become Comics. Reinhard Kleist’s Graphic Biographies.” In DIEGESIS. Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Narrative Research/ Interdisziplinäres E-Journal für Erzählforschung, 8, no.1, 6–23.

Cultural Otherness in Der Traum von Olympia (An Olympic Dream)  225 Amanor, David. 2018. “The Fifth Floor—Reclaiming Mogadishu’s Sports Stadium,” BBC World Service Sounds, 9:26, September 21. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/ p06lt7sv. Bartual, Roberto. 2020. La secuencia gráfica. El cómic y la evolución de su lenguaje. Alcalá de Henares: Marmotilla. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. 2020. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Catozzella, Giuseppe. 2017. Don’t Tell Me You’re Afraid. Translated by Anne Milano Appel. London: Faber and Faber. Huston, Shaun. 2015. “Judging comics by their covers: comic books, text, paratext and context.” In PopMatters, March 6. https://www.popmatters.com/190063-judgingcomics-by-their-covers-2495567072.html. Kleist, Reinhard. 2015. Der Traum von Olympia. Die Geschichte von Samia Yusuf Omar. Hamburg: Carlsen. ———. 2016. An Olympic Dream. The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar. Translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger. London: SelfMade Hero. Kravtsov, Ilya. 2011. “Samia Yusuf Omar at 2008 Beijing Olympics.” YouTube Video, 2:47, October 7, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E1O_2BOt1c. Krug, Teresa. 2016. “The story of Samia Omar, the Olympic runner who drowned in the Med.” The Guardian, August 3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ aug/03/the-story-of-samia-omar-the-olympic-runner-who-drowned-in-the-med. Lefèvre, Pascal. 2013. “The Modes of Documentary Comics.” In Der Dokumentarische Comic, Reportage Und Biographie, edited by Hans-Joachim Backe, 50–60. Berlin: Ch. A. Bachmann. Ludewig, Julia. 2016. “Review of Der Traum von Olympia: Die Geschichte von Samia Yusuf Omar.” In Die Unterrichtspraxis 49, no. 2, 235–236. Mickwitz, Nina. 2020. “Introduction: Discursive Contexts, ‘Voice,’ and Empathy in Graphic Life Narratives of Migration and Exile.” In a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 35, no. 2, 459–465. Mohamed, Zamzam. 2012. “Halyey Cabdi Bile oo ooyay ilmana kasoo dareertay xafladii London” (Abdi Bile speech in London 2012), YouTube Video, 4:07, August 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMf4HIZbUuc. Radio Città Futura. 2014. “‘Non dirmi che hai paura’ di Giuseppe Catozzella” (Interview with Giuseppe Catozzella). YouTube Video, 9:55, January 13. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=p6-tXy2jNC0. Reyns-Chikuma, Chris, and Houssem Ben Lazreg. 2018. “The Discovery of Marjane Satrapi and the Translation of Works from and about the Middle East.” In The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel, edited by Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, and Stephen E. Tabachnick, 405–425. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rifkind, Candida. 2017. “Refugee Comics and Migrant Topographies.” In a/b: Auto/ Biography Studies 32, no. 3, 648–654. Rippl, Gabriele, and Lukas Etter. 2015. “Intermediality, Transmediality, and Graphic Narrative.” In From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels, edited by Daniel Stein and Jan-Noël Thon, 191–218. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter. Spini, Debora. 2019. “Unveiling Violence: Gender and Migration in the Discourse of Right-Wing Populism.” In Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History, edited by Deborah Willis, Ellyn Toscano, and Kalia Brooks Nelson, 135–154. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

226  Julia C. Gómez Sáez Thomas, Dominic. 2011. “The Global Mediterranean: Literature and Migration.” In Yale French Studies 120, 140–153. Varrella, Simona. 2021. “Deaths of Migrants in the Mediterranean Sea 2014–2021.” https:// www.statista.com/statistics/1082077/deaths-of-migrants-in-the-mediterranean-sea/. Varillas, Rubén. 2009. La arquitectura de las viñetas. Texto y discurso en el cómic. Sevilla: Viaje a Bizancio Ediciones. Waberi, Abdourahman. 2009. In the United States of Africa. Translated by David and Nicole Ball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

15 Wasted Potential, Disposable Bodies The Many Victims of Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer Monica Chiu “What a waste,” Derf (John) Backderf (2012, 97) laments about comics avatar Jeff in his graphic narrative My Friend Dahmer that limns the 1970s high school years they attended together in Bath, Ohio. The bildungsroman, concluding at the moment Backderf leaves for college and Dahmer kills his first of 17 victims, is also Backderf’s recollection of his peer 20 years after Dahmer’s conviction and murder by inmates in a Wisconsin prison. Dahmer’s eventual notoriety as a serial killer took Backderf by surprise. From the latter’s perspective, Dahmer was odd and clearly a burgeoning alcoholic by his senior year, but his graphic narrative is an inquiry after incredulity about this revelation: what would compel a white boy of modest means to become a serial killer? Ultimately, Backderf finds authority figures in Dahmer’s life much to blame. Over four pages, Backderf repeatedly exposes Jeff tipping a flask to his mouth or, alternately, slumped over a bottle on school grounds (82–85). “How did he get away with being stinking drunk during school hours?” Derf puzzles (84). “It still blows my mind. Every kid knew what Dahmer was doing … but not a single teacher or school administrator noticed a thing … Were they really that oblivious? Or was it that they just didn’t want to be bothered?” (84). Derf’s graphic narrative is thus a lament over Jeff’s wasted human potential, a young man on the cusp of madness lacking the help he needed: he was simply overlooked. In My Friend Dahmer, Backderf indicts the adults who shirked their responsibility to assist their severely troubled charge, Jeff. On the one hand, this essay examines how artist and author Backderf inflects his comics panels, layout, and drawing style with his personal perspectives about this youth in crisis, subtly blaming Bath, Ohio for permitting one of its own community members to slide into isolation and alcoholism. On the other hand, while Backderf opines that Jeff’s escalating instability is troublingly ignored by supposedly responsible figures, Dahmer’s victims, also male youths in positions of susceptibility, are textually and visually unrepresented in Backderf’s graphic narrative. Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer killed 17 boys and young men, 15 of whom were either Black, Asian or Hispanic (Tithecott 1997, 71). Some of these latter 15 were poor, some gay. He subsequently sexually assaulted and mutilated their corpses. Only his first victim, Steven Hicks (aged 19), is visually represented in My Friend Dahmer; the others appear only as the term “victims” DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-21

228  Monica Chiu well outside the diegesis (Backderf 2012, 220). Indeed, Backderf never intended to memorialize Dahmer’s victims. Rather, he muses that his own insights might fashion “a remarkable tale—one that wasn’t being told by the mainstream media that swarmed in Dahmer’s wake—and my friendship with Jeff … [afforded] a unique perspective.” (2012, 9). In my reading of this graphic narrative about the defencelessness of gay, alcoholic and mentally unstable youth like Jeff, his tragic, unconscionable abandonment by the larger Bath community inadvertently rivals the invisibility of the other youths he killed and which Backderf and media together render mute. The necessity to address the former demands urgent focus on the latter lest we erase them twice, in life and in death.

The presence of absence: Dahmer’s victims as (non)subjects of precarity and social death After an initial failed attempt in 2002 at self-publishing a 24-page version of My Friend Dahmer (although “failure” is suspect given its nomination for a prestigious Eisner Award), Backderf set out to research the second version “the right way,” resulting in the 2012 Abrams ComicArts edition I use for this analysis (10). Derf’s recall assumes a mature voice commenting on youthful antics while charting clues to Jeff’s transformation from an innocuous boy to a sexual predator and murderer. Jeff’s victims, however, are fixed; they do not receive the same possible fluidity as subjects with a potential life trajectory from one kind of human into another, as subjects granted agency and life, albeit short-lived. They neither move in life, truncated in their youth, nor move readers. In crude terms, their overlooked deaths are the foundation upon which Jeff’s enduring notoriety lies. Indeed, one could argue that Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer perpetuates this notoriety, yet I agree with Alane Presswood’s argument that “[t]he goal of My Friend Dahmer is not to redeem Jeffrey Dahmer, but to illustrate the potential opportunities that other individuals might have had to step in and change the trajectory of his tragic life,” perhaps indicting even Backderf himself whose work is “a means of mortification” for his role in Dahmer’s ending (2020, 224, 219).1 But that Backderf himself was only a teenager with little influence, the graphic narrative is a powerful visual reminder of how the authorities of Bath failed a youth in crisis. Indeed, what a waste. Jeff’s clear vulnerability in Backderf’s hands is elevated over the disposed and disposable bodies of his predominantly minority victims. If Jeff resides in vulnerability, his victims occupy the space of precarity. The former suggests that Jeff is at a disadvantage as a closeted homosexual, the child of a mentally ill mother, one of two parents who neglect to notice their son’s increasingly odd behaviour and alcoholism; perhaps they choose not to amid their own challenges. Precarity, as defined by Judith Butler, “designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death. Such populations are at heightened risk of disease, poverty, starvation, and displacement, and of exposure to violence without protection” (2009, ii). While Jeff’s

Wasted Potential, Disposable Bodies 229 closeted homosexuality provides conditions for precarity, that Backderf draws Jeff into legibility while relegating his victims to the narrative’s aporia, where they emerge only in the paratexts, the latter are “eligible for recognition,” as they “do not count as subjects” (Butler 2009, iv, iii). For Butler, their unrecognized subjectlessness constitutes an “evacuation of humanity” (Butler 2004, 146), a concept she argues by explaining how U.S. media depictions of Afghans during the U.S. war are misread as America’s “triumph” abroad (2004, 142). The images contribute to acknowledgements of “what will and will not be human, what will be a liveable life, what will be a grievable death,” here certainly not the suffering, civilian Afghans (2004, 146). In My Friend Dahmer, Jeff’s victims, whom I define as precarious and certainly invisible non-subjects, are grouped with various media sources aiding Backderf’s investigation, including interviews with former high school peers and teachers, FBI records, his own memory, and an autobiography by Dahmer’s father. As props to humanize Jeff, his ungrievable, subjectless, injurable, faceless hence precarious victims are disposable bodies. That is, underrepresented racial minorities are often overlooked while in plain (racial) sight, affected by what Lisa Marie Cacho calls a social death. In her study Social Death, she argues that non-white bodies, many already deemed “the criminal, the illegal alien, and the terrorist suspect are treated as obvious, self-inflicted, and necessary outcomes of law-breaking rather than as effects of the law or as produced by the law” (2012, 4, emphasis in original). They are “ineligible for personhood, needing to prove their innocence even when innocent” (6). As effects, they become mere objects of law and, here, victims of sexual violence whose narratives receive little attention. Their physical deaths result in corporeal disappearance; they are silent, and because their stories are untold, they are silenced. Backderf’s narrative rehearses multiple levels invisibilities already in social, political, even legal play. What is absent from the page (sexual violence, violated gay and minority bodies) is as telling as what is present. Backderf’s other graphic narratives feature his own autographic comics avatars (character Derf appears in several of his own comics) interacting with odd but somewhat admirable characters, all drawn in Backderf’s simple and angular graphic style, from socially undesirable characters in Punk Rock and Trailer Parks (2008) to material trash in Trashed (2015). Their uniformity of elongated, rectangular visages builds a community of likeness among characters across his work, sometimes even indistinguishably so. Given this standardization, however, we readers initially might view Jeff as one of “us,” or we are like Jeff: like him, we once were quirky in our youthful humanity but expected to mature beyond our awkward teenaged years; as acknowledged subjects, we, along with Jeff, are allowed the possibility of progression. But Jeff’s murdered and sexually violated victims beyond his first, Hicks, are afforded no comics’ avatars; they are unrepresented and perhaps even textually un-representable. Their absence unfortunately empowers white, heterosexual, graphic avatar Steven Hicks, Dahmer’s first victim, to stand in for all the victims. Dahmer’s relatively unacknowledged other victims—even if beyond the graphic narrative’s diegesis but still indispensable to understanding it—mimics

230  Monica Chiu the notion of squandered human opportunity that Backderf himself implies about Dahmer. If Dahmer’s demise from a largely forgettable youth to one of national, illimitable aversion suggests the kind of wasted potential featured prominently in media venues immediately following and years after his crimes, including his appearance in My Friend Dahmer two decades after his incarceration, then what do we make of the Epilogue’s two-word reference to the “sixteen victims” (2012, 220) who were denied their life potential? In this subordinated section of the text, readers are not even apprised of their names, which easily can be found online. I list them at the conclusion of this paragraph to acknowledge and dignify their absent presence in an essay about their textual invisibility, their social disposability, their subjectivity to sexual violence, and their precarity: Steven Hicks (19); Steven Tuomi (24); James Doxtator (14); Richard Guerrero (23); Anthony Sears (26); Raymond Smith (33); Eddie Smith (27); Ernest Miller (22); David Thomas (23); Curtis Straughter (19); Errol Linsey (19); Tony Hughs (31); Konerak Sinthasomphone (14); Matt Turner (20); Jeremiah Weinberger (23); Oliver Lacy (23); Joseph Bradehoft (25) (Angelfire 2017). Sexual violence against gay men has been a suggestive absence in graphic narratives despite its frequent occurrence in the wider social arena. In Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby (1995), Cruse features several gay black characters, including crossdresser Esmerelda, in the comics’ southern location of Clayfield, Alabama amid the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement. Importantly, it is the first graphic narrative to illustrate the lynching of a gay white man, highlighting sexual violence amid racial turmoil. Meanwhile, the still covert representation in graphic narratives of sexual violence against gay (men) minorities contrasts significantly with overt violence against women in graphic narratives, as discussed in Chute’s Graphic Women (2010a). Active scholarly discussions about these graphic graphics provide a useful history and an invitation to continue such conversations about other underrepresented minorities who are subjected to sexual violence. As I will argue through My Friend Dahmer, it is not Jeff who is the abjected, but the non-represented minority and gay men he murders.2

Focus on Hicks, then fade to black Jeff’s first victim, Anglo American Steven Hicks, is depicted in My Friend Dahmer as shirtless, long hair blowing around his shoulders, as he hitchhikes, eyes shaded by sunglasses. The “Gold Star” sign along the road’s edge—possibly the name of a gas station or maybe that of a motel chain—suggests that we are to acknowledge his appeal to Jeff (“gold” and “star” words emanating the quality of desired possession), who passes him in the car before screeching to a stop, opening the passenger side door to beckon his entry (175). If Steven is the first of 16 other victims, his illustrated figure in My Friend Dahmer is the first and only (human) sign that portends the end of Jeff’s sanity, marked by the next and final chapter’s title, “Fade to Black” (177). Hicks mirrors Bath’s predominantly Anglo population while visually elevating the evidentiary superiority of whiteness: Hicks’ is the only body Backderf assumes we must see to

Wasted Potential, Disposable Bodies 231 understand the gravity of Jeff’s murders. The rest, the narrative suggests, are nonessential entities. Steven stands in for the others in which his whiteness is considered culturally neutral, thus “naturally” defining, and delimiting the lives of the other 16. In their Disposable Futures (2015), Brad Evans and Henry A. Giroux argue that from a society that has disinvested in poor minorities, a “youth-crime complex” arises, creating “zones where the needs of young people are generally ignored, and where many, especially poor minority youth, often find their appearance alone is sufficient to warrant criminalization” (2015, 59). After climbing into Jeff’s car, Steven’s subsequent “appearance” is as dismembered body parts stuffed in sealed garbage bags in Jeff’s trunk (182). We do not witness the violence that is required to reduce Steven to appendages, but know from the media that it occurred. That Jeff narratively and visually discards subsequent victims similarly allows Steven’s visual representation—as a wasted human life—to eclipse the disposal of the rest. Human value in America, Cacho states, “is made legible in relation to the deviant … the nonnormative, the pathologized” (2012, 18).3 Jeff’s victims, considered non-normative and deviant because they were black, brown, and/or homosexual, were othered long before they were selected by Jeff for elimination and obscured by Backderf. The artist’s decision to conclude at the moment in which the lives of Jeff’s victims appear obliterates them twice. The Epilogue to My Friend Dahmer states, “He killed sixteen victims [after Steven Hicks], two of whom were fourteen years old, over the next four years, until his grisly crimes were discovered” (220). Backderf privileges Jeff’s white body, and the victims’ ages over their race, by re-scripting the latter’s social disposability as literary accessories. The few scholarly essays on My Friend Dahmer, briefly summarized here for context, emphasize Jeff’s exclusion from his peers in contrast to my own reading—that of his inclusion at the expense of his victims. For Nina Mickwitz, the vertical and upright figure of Backderf’s avatar Jeff, hunting for a lunch spot in a cafeteria thronged with high school youths, contrasts with the horizontal line of students sitting at tables, depicted as a line across the page; that contrast is paired with the fact that Jeff’s upright body exceeds the topmost horizontal frame on the page, visually cueing “his outsider status” (2016, 17). Later, when he sits at an enclosed carrel removed from his peers, Mickwitz views this as an aesthetic management of Jeff’s exclusion from “social connectedness” (2016, 17). Harriet Earle proposes that “tools of suggestion and implication” “maximize reader affect,” as readers are first assisted by visual invitations and, using McCloud’s definition of closure, actively participate in interpreting the nuances of the narrative (2017, 5). For example, in a series of panels lacking speech balloons or amid text boxes that depict Jeff’s encounter with his first victim, readers who already know the outcome are still invited to fill in other gaps: how much time elapsed between Jeff’s acknowledgment of Steven, his slowing of the car, his opening the door for the hitchhiker, and then Steven’s decision to accept that invitation? While we know the unfortunate outcome of Hicks’ decision to accept the ride, argues Earle, it is through Backderf’s visual strategies that

232  Monica Chiu readers attach chronological significance to the actual unknown amount of time passing between each stage of the scene. This, however, is at the detriment of his unspecified victims. The gaps in our knowledge base of nearly everything about them—except their race and sexual orientation—prohibit us from seeing them as anything but nomenclature, or “Dahmer’s victims,” lending primacy to the killer’s and not the victims’ identity. It is Backderf’s final chapter that encourages readerly participation: we are tasked with acknowledging Jeff’s 16 subsequent sexually violated and murdered victims through the presence of their absence.

Witnessing, longing and overlooking My Friend Dahmer reinforces the psychologically cruel effect that closeting homosexuality must have wreaked on Jeff, a burgeoning alcoholic whose neglectful parents struggled with their own challenges. His strange behaviour in school—pretending to have seizures—and his fascination with acidifying roadkill—all point to a youth asking for help without fulfilment. The depiction of Jeff’s sexual attraction to a neighbour, a man who jogs past his window regularly, illustrates despair and longing. In a scene featuring this object of desire, we view Jeff from behind, as if watching the jogger, in concert with Jeff, from his bedroom window (66). Backderf permits us to see from Jeff’s perspective, inviting us to acknowledge his unrequited sexual desires. Backderf then redirects our view by 180 degrees, where we see Jeff from outside his window, now from the perspective of the jogger and that of the larger society that judges him (67). At this exterior, medium-distance view, we see Jeff’s shadowed head and shoulders framed by his bedroom window. The reflected sunlight on his glasses obscures his eyes, preventing an interpretation of his emotions through familiar facial-related signs, often legible from the shape and expression of the eyes or eyebrows. Backderf’s framing of Jeff in the window, whom we see while obscuring any possibly returned gaze, suggests that he is trapped psychologically and physically by judgment from beyond his bedroom window. To pursue the jogger is to publically declare his homosexuality. These illustrations are placed near an arrangement of panels that depict typical seizures experienced by Jeff’s ill mother Joyce. The congruence of disability with homosexuality in this sequential equation invites the former to inform the latter.4 Immediately before the aforementioned scene of the jogger, Jeff witnesses what we understand to be one of his mother’s convulsions: she begins shaking and grunting “uuuuuuuuh!” (63). She sweats and her eyes roll upwards before she collapses on the couch (64–65). Jeff, however, does nothing but observe, perhaps inured by now to such disturbing but now-typical domestic scenes. He then saunters past her prone body and into his bedroom (65). A series of panels immediately following depict him sequentially, but not necessarily chronologically, on his bed, dressed only in his underwear, his head hanging in anguish. The movement from panels featuring a seizing and clearly ill Joyce Dahmer to her despairing son motivates inquiries into the difference between illness

Wasted Potential, Disposable Bodies 233 (patient-described) and disease (medically defined), the former social, the latter pathological. Who gets treated? Who is overlooked? The panels then depict Jeff’s acknowledgment of the jogger from his bedroom window, as described above. The chapter concludes with a view from the outside in which the window frames his face and shoulders. He is walled in, as inaccessible to others as they are to him. Concurrently, Backderf refuses the reader an emotional connection to Jeff by prohibiting his gaze, on most occasions, from meeting ours, employing what visual rhetoricians Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen call a “non-transactive reaction” (as when an “actor” or subject looks at something in the distance that the reader cannot see or know) (2006, 175). Jeff is typically glancing down, to the side, or his eyes are obscured by exterior light reflecting on his glasses. Sometimes the top of the panel’s frame truncates a full view of his head, displaying the bottom of his glasses, nose, and mouth. In her essay “My Friend Dahmer: The Comics as Bildungsroman” Harriet E.H. Earle argues that Backderf frames incidents through Jeff’s glasses, wherein his shaded lenses obscure his eyes at the same time that they shift readerly focus to them (2014, 436). However, I propose that Jeff’s gaze is not a “demand” that requires something from us (such as a reaction), but rather an “offer” that gives information (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006, 120). Through Backderf’s aesthetic decisions, we are encouraged—offered the chance—to look away in imitation of those authority figures circulating in Jeff’s life who practice the same overlooking, which is not an overseeing but rather a willed ignorance not to see. Teachers overlook Jeff’s clearly drunken state in class; in the midst of a divorce, his parents leave Jeff behind to finish his senior year alone; his father moves out; his mother takes his younger brother to live with her elsewhere.

Illustrating the monstrous Pairing Jeff’s sexual desires with Joyce’s disability interestingly moves the graphic narrative from Jeff as Other (gay) to Jeff as monstrous. Rosemarie GarlandThomson maps a history of America’s cultural, medical, and filmic fascination with “spectacular bodies,” those “that are breaches of the common human scale and shape” (2009, 161). According to Garland-Thomson, the monstrous is first defined for its unusual bodily shape, one that invites unabashed stares from a paying public at circus and other spectatorial events, for its fantastic difference from the normate. Medicine eventually removes them from public view, she argues, and into institutional spaces. Currently, entertainment industries create “bionic monsters” at which we can stare without guilt, such as those found in the Star Wars films or, I would add, the robotic kaiju of the 2013 film Pacific Rim and those emerging from Marvel comics-based films, including characters such as the Hulk, Iron Man, and their villains (Garland-Thomson 2009, 164–165). In their introduction to an issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics about graphic embodiment, editors Aidan Diamond and Lauranne Poharec announce that one key inquiry into “freaked and Othered bodies in

234  Monica Chiu comics” includes “Which bodies are permitted depiction as heroic or innocent … and how … their representational embodiment determine[s] their casting” (2017, n.p.). Curiously, then, our contemporary 21st-century explicit and devastating policing of brown and black bodies, as exemplified by the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, George Floyd, among many others, is wholly absent in a book that attempts to normalize the egregious, here a white serial killer. Diamond and Poharec’s argument that the “supernatural (the freak, the monster, the mad)” is often pitted against “the outcast (the queer, the racial Other, the criminal)” plays out clearly in My Friend Dahmer (2017, n.p.). At first, Jeff is depicted as an ordinary boy. Backderf writes that Jeff “didn’t stand out in any way. He was just part of the adolescent mass, a piece of the scenery” from seventh through ninth grade (2012, 42, emphasis in original). In Backderf’s hands, Jeff looks not only like every other teenager in My Friend Dahmer, but also like any of Backderf’s characters in his other graphic narratives and comics, as explained earlier in relation to Backderf’s illustration style.5 This representationally uniform style is an artistic means by which Backderf normalizes Jeff. That this style depicts everybody in unattractive caricature—long rectangular faces, neutral or grim expressions, and mostly unemotional eyes—permits Jeff an equality with his (predominantly white) peers and townsfolk. In fact, when assisted by his peers, Derf explains, Jeff often appeared in group photographs of clubs and organizations to which he did not belong, normalizing the outcast. With help from the Dahmer Fan Club, as his acquaintances called themselves, he once ran for student council elections as an imaginary candidate (209). Ironically, Jeff-as-candidate “appeared” in the school’s 1977 yearbook as a blank space under which “not pictured” is written (209). In an additional example, among the mostly smiling faces of the high school’s National Honor Society membership, Jeff’s face is blacked out (by school administration), indicating his pictorial removal from the society in which he was not actually a member (117). His inclusion in the photographs reveals Jeff’s acceptance by his peers for his clownish behaviour even if he is eventually literally and figuratively erased from official school publications by authority figures. While he demands to be seen by showing up where he does not belong, he is perpetually and duly expunged. Backderf’s text box describing the National Honor Society photo sums up the situation in terms apt to this essay: “This photo would become the symbol of Dahmer’s wasted youth. The boy who didn’t belong” (117). Jeff’s initial acceptance as somebody like “us” conjures up Cacho’s argument: that brown-skinned bodies are always already violators by the colour of their skin. As a necessary reminder, his first victim is white and heterosexual. He is named and imaged in My Friend Dahmer. The other 16 victims are not. The formers’ monstrous (notable) absence in relation to the presence of normalizing depictions of Jeff resonate uncomfortably with Dahmer’s caution to “Pity him [Jeff], but don’t empathize with him” (Preface, 11). The narrative begs a concrete image of those with whom we are to empathize.

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Divergence and convergence The Prologue opens with one of the book’s recurring images: an aerial shot of blacktopped highway rolling through the middle of the page to an unillustrated endpoint. The repeated centrality of the road to nowhere is significantly positioned in the centre of many of Backderf’s panels. The road is flanked by a few houses set amid a field of boulders and logs; it curves over two hills until it vanishes over a final crest at the top of the page. The page’s aerial view places the reader in a powerful position projecting positivity: as the road plunges out of sight at the top of the panel (“up” or the “top” of a page deemed better than “down” or the “bottom”), the clouds part, creating a vertical shaft of light on the horizon, projecting a sense of a bright future. Despite these hopeful signs, the panel lacks life forms—no moving cars, no neighbours working in the yards or fields—except for a sole character walking along the right-hand shoulder, Jeff in diminished form who trudges along with his back to the reader. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006, 57), in a western, left-to-right reading direction, the left side of the page contains the “given” or a departure point, the right side of the page presents the “new” or information unknown to readers. Jeff is the bearer of information we yearn to know: Why did he do what he did? His lone figure, dwarfed by his surroundings, is freighted through Backderf’s art with that yearning to understand. Our attention is directed to the visual power of the dominating black road, which literally drives through the centre of the panel, disappearing off the top of the page. The direction of the view on this page troubles the expected reading on the next because it does not “answer” the question of what we might see (on a subsequent page) at the end of the road, the apex of the horizon. That our gaze is directed to the ground—“down” is negatively contrasted to “up”—and that the illuminated horizon, an image exuding expectation, is already (be)clouded on the first page both suggest the reality of Jeff’s grim future. Thus, despite the bright sunshine illuminating the highway, despite the beckoning horizon and the bucolic country scene, the panel depicts an aura of melancholy. The telephone poles lining the road look like elongated crosses in a soldier’s cemetery. They are signposts intrinsically connected to a telephone network by which we communicate, but signs of Jeff’s disturbance are never correctly read and conveyed. For Kress and van Leeuwen, “a visual proposition such as a road proposes” an endpoint or conclusion (2006, 59). In My Friend Dahmer, however, the forward progression suggested by a road or path always concludes in stasis. Each time such a visual mechanism appears, the reader acknowledges its resonance with the Prologue’s roadway scene, that initial swath of pavement cresting into the horizon at the top of the panel/page before plunging into the unseen. For example, after frightening off peers with a noxious and horrifying acidified raccoon corpse, Jeff stands alone at the top of a wooded path’s crest; positioned in the upper half of a full-page panel, the path diverges in two directions into an ominous foreground below him. The eerie wooded scenery complements Jeff’s defeated stance: hollow logs dispense sticks and moss from holes that look like

236  Monica Chiu screaming mouths while jagged tree stumps resemble gravestones. His body casts a long shadow down the trail, its umbral head positioned at the apex of diverging paths. Positioned remorsefully in the background, Jeff’s vulnerable form seems salvageable from the chaos depicted in the foreground. His yearning for peer validation and family acceptance is visualized as a road whose destination remains unknown.

Overseeing and overlooking Nearly a week after the 2017 Las Vegas shootings that killed 58 and injured hundreds, my digital New York Times news feed read, “Many mass murderers say why they did it, leaving a manifesto or a telling trail. Not [Las Vegas shooter] Stephen Paddock … Our reporters were able to reconstruct many of the contours of his life … But he had no criminal record and no known extremist views” (“Your Weekend Briefing,” Sunday, October 8, 2017). After serial murders committed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Adam Lanza, and Dylann Roof, journalists investigate possible causes for the young men’s turn to murder in what I call post-due diligence narratives. Answers assist us in prevention, safety, and, in the case of Jeff, community interrogation over the lack of parental and other authorial oversight. In yet another telling panel sequence in My Friend Dahmer, a teacher takes attendance remarking, “Sigh. That kid [Jeff] is never here” as he places yet another X for absence in his grade book, joining a string of Xs and Ts for “tardy” (144, emphasis in original). On the recto in a full-page panel, Jeff leans against the outer wall of the school chugging liquor from a glass bottle while a teacher, framed in the adjacent school building window, tasks students to open their books (145). Criminals are thus often unidentified anomalies in a collective community that overlooks, or refuses to see, what the larger society finds uncomfortable to acknowledge. In his “Sources” section at the back of My Friend Dahmer, Backderf quotes from Lionel Dahmer’s autobiographical A Father’s Story (1994) that Mr. Dahmer finds “little amiss with his son, outside of some social difficulties … To Lionel, his son was—incredibly!—a normal teen” (Backderf 2012, 202), corroborated by his mother in another interview (2012, 207). These remarkable post-due diligence narratives show how society permits the ability to see without seeing, allowing Jeff, the youth trapped in an unhealthy environment, to drift unaided. My Friend Dahmer clearly engages in such media and popular culture narrative representations of Jeff, what Sara L. Knox might deem aestheticized narratives (1998, 15). In her study of murder’s arresting representation in literature, Murder: A Tale of Modern Life in America, Knox investigates the “cultural meaning given to murder, that irreplaceable taken-for-granted quality of a murder that, when narrated, says so much about what a culture knows and what it will not let itself know” (17, emphasis in original). Knox’s argument in reference to my study suggests that Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer is an aestheticized narrative that shows us what we want to know (about Dahmer) at the expense of what we will not let ourselves know: the vulnerability of brown, gay subjects exposed to violence and death (whose afterlives do not resonate for us at all)

Wasted Potential, Disposable Bodies 237 at the hands of a white gay murderer whose reverberations in the media world remain significant to this day. Murdered in their youth, overshadowed by the notoriety of their killer, and thus forgotten by most except those who loved them, Jeff’s victims are objectified and ultimately more abject than the abjected Jeff in their complete disappearance from Backderf’s pages. Our expectations are not that we view graphic representations of Jeff’s violence against them, as in artist Eddie Campbell’s imagined Jack the Ripper who horrifically and even slowly mutilates the body of a prostitute over the course of 30 pages in Alan Moore’s authored From Hell (drawn by Eddie Campbell 2004, Chapter 10, 1–34). Rather, there exist numerous other strategies in graphic narratives to conscientiously depict the unimaginable.6 According to Chute in her Disaster Drawn, graphic narratives can render visible that which is “physically absent,” thereby “[a]ctivating history on the page” (2016, 12). For Kate Polak, in her Ethics in the Gutter, acts of violence in our historical record are staged in comics through an “ethics of spectatorship,” wherein “point of view creates pathways for identification” (2017, 2). Backderf’s “representational choices,” using one of Polak’s terms (2017, 8) not only illustrate Dahmer’s life before his first murder in contrast to media’s focus on his grisly crimes, but also depict Jeff as a loner, enabling us to see a side of Jeff obscured by sensational reports of his crimes. As argued above, the few times Jeff looks at us, his gaze offers a “demand” to which we cannot reply. Backderf’s chosen perspective permits us to forge “a certain affective relationship” with his depicted hollow face (Polak 2017, 13). That only his first victim Hicks is depicted, however, prohibits the gutter, as addressed in in Polak’s argument, to fully assist readers in imaginatively conjuring up Dahmer’s other victims (13). According to Polak who references Scott McCloud’s notion of closure when she defines it as engaging “the imaginative reconciliation of different iconic content in the panel and often different points of view” (2017, 13), lack of victims’ iconic content prevents identification; the gutters cannot “close us, to use the concept as a verb, into an ethical nexus of seeing as empathizing.7 I return to Butler’s contention that humanization is made legible through representability (2009, 144); those deemed precarious are unrepresented, illegible in society, invisible, their suffering ungrievable. We recognize the grave immorality of Jeff’s murders, but in Backderf’s work, we cannot easily transition from acknowledging Jeff to memorializing his faceless, nameless, unrepresented victims. There are no images to “decode”; there are no calls for Polak’s “Never again!” (2017, 14). More than simply a capacious imagination, or even an image, is necessary to conjure My Friend Dahmer’s victims of social, political, textual, and literal deaths. Readerly exertions required to conjure their presence replicate wider social struggles over how we might discern (see) what we think we understand and what we often categorically (by choice) overlook. In My Friend Dahmer, those negligent of overseeing Jeff get a second chance to re-evaluate (resuscitate) his wasted life. Meanwhile, his visual and narrative importance wastes those Others whose deaths elevate his investigation and illuminate those whose disposability points out the real gaps to which we must turn our attention.

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Notes 1. Presswood quotes Backderf, “Where were the damn adults?” (2020, 224). 2. Even Jeff’s roadkill disintegrates in acid-filled glass jars; the dog he thinks about killing receives more page space than do his human animals. 3. According to Cacho, a “(re)valuing always implies devaluing a not-valued ‘other’” (2012, 17). Diana Fuss and Richard Tithecott discuss what Americans view as valuable humanity. 4. Tithecott discusses the “easy” connection between savagery and homosexuality in the Dahmer case (1997, 74); that while the homosexual “Dahmer is prey to his sexual desires,” heterosexual lust killers possess “normal” desires (1997, 75, 72). 5. Backderf’s visual constructions of Jeff do not completely overturn popular culture’s sensationalized narratives about serial killers. See Presswood (2020, 219) and Diana Fuss (1993, 197). 6. See Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood, where Marjane Satrapi employs a completely black page to illustrate Marjane’s inability to process horrific carnage (2003, 142). 7. Read together, Nicholas Mirzoeff in The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (2011) and Gunther Kress in Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication (2010) both suggest that what we overlook (or are unable or uninterested to discern) is ironically what we socially oversee. To find Jeff/Dahmer, we must locate our own right to (over)look as central to how we see.

References Angelfire. 2017. “Jeffrey Dahmer’s Victims.” October 17. http://www.angelfire.com/ fl5/headsinmyfridge/Victims.html. Backderf, Derf. 2015. Trashed. New York: Abrams ComicArts. ———. 2014. True Stories #1. Cupertino: Alternative Comics. ———. 2012. My Friend Dahmer. New York: Abrams ComicArts. ———. 2008. Punk Rock and Trailer Parks. San Jose: SLG Publishing. Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso. ———. 2009. “Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics.” AIBR: Revista de Antropologia Iberoamericana 4 (1): i–xiii. www.aibr.org. Cacho, Lisa Marie. 2012. Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected. New York: New York University Press. Chute, Hillary L. 2010a. Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2016. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Cruse, Howard. 1995. Stuck Rubber Baby. New York: HarperPerennial. Diamond, Aidan, and Lauranne Poharec. 2017. “Introduction: Freaked and Othered Bodies in Comics.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 8 (5): 402–416. DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2017.135583. Earle, Harriet. 2014. “My Friend Dahmer: The Comics as Bildungsroman.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 5 (4): 429–440. ———. 2017. “Framing Violence and Serial Murder in My Friend Dahmer and Green River Killer.” Comics Grid 7: 5. Evans, Brad, and Henry A. Giroux. 2015. Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of the Spectacle. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Wasted Potential, Disposable Bodies 239 Fuss, Diana. 1993. “Monsters of Perversion: Jeffrey Dahmer and The Silence of the Lambs.” In Media Spectacles, edited by Marjorie Garber, Jann Matlock and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, 181–205. New York: Routledge. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2009. Staring: How We Look. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knox, Sara L. 1998. Murder: A Tale of Modern American Life. Durham: Duke University Press. Kress, Gunther R. 2010. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. New York: Routledge. Kress, Gunther R., and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006. Visual Rhetoric: The Grammar of Visual Design. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Mickwitz, Nina. 2016. Documentary Comics: Graphic Truth-Telling in a Skeptical Age. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Moore, Alan, and Eddie Campbell. 2004. From Hell. Marietta: Top Shelf Productions. Polak, Kate. 2017. Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. Presswood, Alane L. 2020. “A Killer Rhetoric of Alternatives: Re/framing Monstrosity in My Friend Dahmer.” In Performativity, Cultural Construction, and the Graphic Narrative, edited by Leigh Ann Howard and Susanna Hoeness-Krupsaw, 219–235. New York: Routledge. Satrapi, Marjane. 2003. Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood. Trans. Mattias Ripa. New York: Pantheon Books. Tithecott, Richard. 1997. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

16 Strike Comics Representing the Inequities and Absurdities of Academic Precarity1 Lydia Wysocki

Introduction Strike comics are comics made as part of industrial action, thus probably the greatest form of political cartooning. This chapter offers an example of contemporary strike comics production and usage, namely the three series of daily comics I made as part of an industrial action in 2018–2020 fighting for fair pay and working conditions. Writing as both a comics maker and an academic researcher in precarious employment, I exemplify contemporary uses of comics in activism against neoliberal precarity in academic employment, paying specific attention to how comics are shaped by the circumstances of their production. I first introduce key issues of precarity and activism as they pertain to comics, then go on to describe the project and present its processes of making, publication, and distribution—including production, content, art style, ethics, anonymity, editorial and duration. I then share anecdotes (not data) from this process, and my own reflections on tensions inherent in this project.

Precarity in the context of academic employment Acknowledging that in recent years precarity has risked becoming an all-purpose term, in this chapter, I use Millar’s (2017) interpretation. Millar built on Day’s (1952) and Butler’s (2006) respective critiques of contemporary power relations, refocusing attention on the relational nature of precarious labour as opposed to a normative form of full-time wage labour. That relational understanding is distinct from Bourdieu’s (1998) discussion of precarity primarily as unstable employment, or Standing’s (2011) focus on the precariat as a “class-in-the-making.” Precarious labour needs to be understood not as a compartmentalized quirk of the labour market, but as a structural issue in relation to the distant promise of stable employment (see Figure 16.1). In reflecting on comics made as part of industrial action, I will refer to examples of trade union action against inequitable employment practices in UK Higher Education, including examples specific to the context of the industrial action called by the University and College Union (UCU) in the UK—covering the 2018 strikes, and the two phases of strike action across November 2019 DOI: 10.4324/9781003225669-22

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Figure 16.1  Day 3, 2019.

242  Lydia Wysocki to March 2020—as well as more generalized issues of labour relations. Amid testimonies of the unpleasant realities of precarious employment in UK Higher Education, many careers in HE nevertheless remain privileged professional roles. Though the HE sector relies on exploitative labour relations, it is still, despite the highly specialized and vocational nature of many HE roles, one employment option among many for a highly skilled workforce and cannot be equated to the extremes of subsistence living or multi-generational unemployment. This chapter makes no attempt to compare the UK HE sector’s heavy reliance on precarious labour across sectors beyond HE, or indeed to HE institutions in international contexts. Rather, I am offering this chapter as a comics-specific contribution to the academic literature on, and the continued fight against, precarious forms of academic labour. I am writing in my dual roles as a comics creator, and an early-career academic researcher who uses comics in my research—and at the time of writing, is employed on a project-funded (and therefore fixed-term) research contract. While even a precarious position in HE is a privileged form of employment, this does not detract from the solidarity inherent in trade union membership. UCU is the recognized trade union for academic staff in the Higher and Further Education sectors including prison education, and at local branch levels, it works alongside UNISON and UNITE—the recognized trades unions for clerical and ancillary roles, and technical and maintenance roles, respectively. My comics include references to solidarity expressed by UK trade unions including the National Education Union and the Communication Workers’ Union, in addition to acts of solidarity and kindness by groups and individuals who were not members of a recognized union. In recognizing the precariousness of others, Millar (2017) offers a relational understanding that acknowledges that the precarity inherent in a dependence on selling one’s labour to afford the necessities of life is a normal—which is to say abhorrent—feature of capitalism, and that a focus on precarity must not obscure attention to race, class, gender, and further structural inequities. Members of a solidarity movement are united as a community in one struggle for fairness, but not all members are struggling in the same ways or facing the same everyday manifestations of power. It is from this need for solidarity that I now proceed to a specific focus on the use of comics in theUK HE strike action.

Precarious labour relations and activist comics Comics differ from illustration reportage (see Embury and Minichiello 2018) particularly in the comics medium’s inherent use of sequence, its interdependence of words and pictures, and the tradition of humour; not all comics are funny, but levity has long been associated with the comics medium and can be a powerful communicative tool. A key point of reference is Mickwitz’s (2016) work on documentary comics as truthful depictions of real events. Her argument for a comics-specific form of documentary counters longstanding assumptions that documentary must involve recording media and is advanced through

Strike Comics 243 examples in which comics creators blend documentary and autobiographical approaches. Mickwitz’s acknowledgement “that documentary involves construction rather than transparent duplication of the reality it records” (2016, 9) is a crucial reminder that comics are cultural products made, distributed and read by humans, for particular purposes. No part of this process of communication is neutral; rather, it is within the socially—and culturally—determined uses of language through which we make sense of the social world. Within the field of applied comics as comics with a specific job to do (Wysocki 2021), strike comics are made and used within a specific instance of industrial action. From this attention to comics as a particular form of material culture, I locate my focus on what strikes comics are and how they can be used within a wider field of explicitly-politicized comics. Examples within that wider field include: comics about the history of labour relations (Rius 2003; Dickson and Wilson 2013) and key political events (Boyle 2014); writing about labour relations in historic examples of comics production (Harris 1977); readings of comics that depict forms of industrial action (Carleton 2014) or marginalized working-class lives (DiPaolo 2018); and scholarship that seeks to understand labour and capital in comics production (Gray 2020; Brienza and Johnston 2016; Repetti 2007). Though there is educative and entertainment merit to these various forms of political comics, my particular interest is in strike comics created by participants in industrial action, as a form of political cartooning in action. In noting comics creators for whom comics making is a politicized, radical, act—notably: Keith Knight, Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry—I want to emphasize two points. First, that in highlighting examples of comics that do expose and challenge the operation of power, it is not inevitable that all comics, or all autobiographical comics, are a form of activism. Second, that political comics and political cartooning take many forms. Whereas Connor and Ferri (2006) worked within a narrow definition of political cartoons and turned this to emancipatory effect in their analysis of a sample of comics related to Brown vs. Board of Education, Buck’s (2018) account of a similarly narrow collection of examples did not embark on a comparable social justice purpose. Although conventions of style and publication format can be useful in setting the parameters of a study, such specificity can become a problem if it overlooks the point that any and all forms of comics can be political, and that publications are only as radical as their editors, publishers, funders, and stakeholders choose to allow. Strike comics are a reminder that the field of political cartooning extends far beyond one elite tradition in which a small number of comics creators produce work for a smaller-still list of newspapers and periodicals. As scholars and practitioners continue to explore the potential of print and online publishing for sharing comics, there are opportunities to access comics that sit between the truthful depiction of documentary comics and a subjective engagement in social and political action. After examining canonical examples in which the comics creator is also a protagonist—notably: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2007), Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza (2009), and Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang (2006)—Mickwitz’s (2016) study turned its attention to

244  Lydia Wysocki the proliferation of short-form documentary comics inseparable from web-based publishing and distribution. This field overlaps with longstanding traditions of zine-making as activism (Schlit 2003), though Mickwitz’s focus was on examples that report on someone else’s reality rather than accounting for that comics creator’s own activist participation. Further examples are in Positive Negatives’ (2020) series of ethnographic comics: a robust approach in which comics are sensitively made in partnership with comics creators local to each story’s context, but not made by informants themselves. Hidalgo’s (2015) use of fotonovelas somewhat bridges this gap between the creator of the comics and the originator of the story through an activist approach in which comics made using low-cost and free digital tools are used to tell counterstories that are rooted in community heritage. There are also action research approaches to making comics that share participants’ own stories, notably McNicol’s (2020) work with Manchesterbased women of Bangladeshi heritage in partnership with comics creator Jim Medway, which is a project of interest for its greater emphasis on the agency of articulating participants’ own stories than on the output of sharing stories with an audience as action towards a social goal. The means of distribution can inhibit or enhance the activist intent of a comic. Whether as self-publishing or working with established publishers and distributors, publishing comics for sale to readers can have a role in spreading activist content, but this strategy functions within the marketplace not as an alternative to it. Whatever a comic’s content, books sold to discerning readers are not the same as thrusting pages of comics—as image files, or as photocopied sheets—into people’s hands at picket lines or into social media feeds at the point of need, which for this chapter means on a physical or digital picket line during ongoing industrial action. The continued importance of activist publishers shows this as a continuum not a binary, and thanks to various presses and distribution networks Breaking Free’s (Daniels 1989) account of industrial action during the 1980s UK miners’ strikes and the Wapping dispute remains in print over 30 years after its first publication. Having emphasized that strike comics are not a spectator’s commentary on industrial action but more directly engaged as part of that action, a comic that is purported to be activist must be subject to cultural-materialist questions including: Who made it? Why, and for what purpose? How was it funded?2 Activism should be evident in a comic’s processes of production as well as its content. Without such engagement, comics can play a valuable role in raising awareness of and contributing to political discourse but risk being cosy souvenir items only tangentially related to the action they are claimed to be part of. Having raised these critical questions, I now attempt to answer them by presenting the example of my own series of comics made as part of industrial action.

Making comics as part of the UK HE strike action As a social science academic researcher and a comics creator, I made strike comics as part of three rounds of official industrial action in the UK Higher Education over a total of 36 strike days in the period 2018–2020. The 83 pages of comics

Strike Comics 245 are in three volumes with the overall title Strike Comics and are available to read online.3 Before presenting my processes of making, publishing and distribution, I give a brief snapshot of the context of this industrial action to help build the argument that though my comics contain elements of autobiography and biography, these strike comics are better positioned as an account of the UK Higher Education sector’s particular manifestations of precarious labour during neoliberal crisis. I will then share anecdotes and reflections on the tensions involved in strike comics as a form of participation in industrial action, as an example of solidarity against precarity. Precarious employment in academia includes the lack of a stable platform from which to work with colleagues to build one’s career and contribute to one’s field(s). For early-career academics, this can mean the instability of “youth” is contractually enforced at least into middle age, making it bleakly amusing that the 2018, 2019 and 2020 industrial action in UK Higher Education had a primary focus on defending old age pension entitlements. In a UK context, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) is a workplace pension scheme based on one’s earnings and is distinct from eligibility for a state pension. The UCU balloted its members on taking industrial action in 2018 that sought to defend staff pensions against proposed changes to the USS scheme’s valuation methodology that would have reduced the benefits colleagues relied on for their retirement. This intervention was a flashpoint in the long-running fight for fair pay and working conditions; McKnight (2019) has given a thorough account of this strike’s scale and reach, both for the specific grounds on which the strike was called and for the broader philosophical context of advanced education’s role in building a better world. Subsequent ballots for and rounds of industrial action had an increasingly explicit acknowledgement that not all people doing academic work are employed in ways that are eligible for workplace pensions contributions, and that the landscape facing early-career staff is fraught with precarious employment practices. Evidence of the deleterious effects of casualized employment for individuals and for the HE sector are summarized by Megoran and Mason who acknowledge that “casualisation overlaps with and compounds other forms of oppression: as UCU has highlighted, fixed-term and casual contracts are disproportionately likely to be held by women and B[A] ME staff” (2020, 3). Local branches and the elected Congress (national structure of UCU) persistently engage in identifying and challenging instances of inequitable working conditions—including issues specific to race and ethnicity, class, dis/ability, gender, sexuality, caring responsibilities and further facets of lived experience—but the grounds on which industrial action was called were necessarily more specific. At the time of the second round of industrial action referenced in this chapter, UCU’s campaign materials phrased workplace issues as “four fights”: against pay inequality, job insecurity, rising workload, and pay deflation. As such, the specific mention of pensions in the comics quoted in this chapter are intended as points of entry to wider labour relations issues that acknowledge the structural nature of social and economic inequity, as well as specific lived experiences of unfair working conditions.

246  Lydia Wysocki The 2018 round of industrial action, called solely to oppose changes to workers’ pensions, was my first experience of going on strike. Despite believing it was right and necessary to take part, the experience of being on a picket line was initially unsettling. The social unease of not being sure how to picket and the financial unease of withheld pay was in addition to physical discomfort: 2018’s picketing coincided with the harsh winter storm Anticyclone Hartmut, also called the Beast from the East. I gradually became accustomed to the adjusted routine of commuting from my home to the university campus, then signing in at the UCU branch office and joining a picket line instead of going to my office to work. Commuting back home from campus, I remember a mix of relief at the relative warmth of a metro carriage and swirling thoughts as I used the journey time to process this strange routine. After walking home from the metro station, I needed to sit down with a cup of tea, then as I warmed up, it was bizarre to have time to use in any way other than getting on with my contracted research.

Processes of making, publishing and distributing Making comics about being on strike began as a way to put my thoughts on paper. Sharing those comics on my own Twitter account and blog became a way to connect with participants in and supporters of the strikes. After a few days of self-publishing comics in this way, members of my local UCU branch asked if they could print recent comics to give out from the picket lines. With my permission, colleagues mixed my comics with memes and images of placards made by more strikers and distributed these as folded and stapled booklets printed daily by a local independent printer. Anecdotally, these collections were a boost to strikers’ morale and functioned well alongside text-based leaflets as literature explaining the purposes of the strike to staff, students, visitors to the campus and passers-by. In a protracted dispute, people could get bored of the same bulk-printed leaflets but were willing to take and read a new comic each day. Making the comics was a way to check my own understanding of the issues at stake: having previously thought my own fractional employment contract meant a secure pension, I was fast realizing both how little I understood of the pension scheme I had taken for granted and how labyrinthine the union’s democratic processes could be. Despite progress with negotiations, there was no quick end in sight for this dispute. On strike days, I found more of a rhythm in making a comic each lunchtime and emailing it to the UCU branch’s communications officers for them to print and distribute, in addition to me posting each comic online. During periods of action short of strike, I cut back to a weekly frequency to help me continue to engage with updates—and connect with colleagues—over a protracted dispute. When the next round of strike action was balloted for and confirmed in 2019, the communication officers offered me a paid commission to make daily strike comics for the union branch. We agreed this as 2 hours per day for two short black and white comics presented as a double-sided A5 leaflet and a web-ready image file, to be completed ideally 48 hours in advance. Planning ahead meant 1,000 leaflets could be commercially printed ready for picketers to collect from

Strike Comics 247 the UCU office each day and distribute from picket lines, and posted on Twitter at a consistent time each morning as part of the union branch’s social media activity. This agreement continued for the 2020 round of strike action, with the slight difference that I provided comics in weekly batches to help streamline tasks. I prepared collected editions of each of the three series of strike comics, for sale slightly above the cost of printing with proceeds going to the union branch. At the time of writing, true to the economics of small press publishing, these comics have made a loss of £25 with copies still available for sale, and the third edition is on hold because of COVID-19 disruption to all but essential work for me and for commercial printers. All comics are available to read and download for free online. The practicalities of collaborative production were shaped by fast turnaround and an abiding commitment to authenticity. I made rough notes to plan each comic’s content and layout, working from source material that included union reports on working conditions, picket line mini-interviews with colleagues, strike news shared on Twitter and my own experiences. I drew some comics fluently in ink, whereas other comics needed more iterations at thumbnailing and pencil stages. I incorporated most mistakes into the comics, and where essential used correction fluid on original artwork and/or minimal erasing on scanned images; digital corrections were mostly useful to make sure line work was crisp and that each comic was as legible as possible at A5 size. Lettering began as a mix of handwriting and alphabet rubber stamps as an enjoyably noisy physical process, then as the series progressed included some digital lettering for speed and clarity particularly in longer passages of text. 2018’s page designs did not have a border; 2019 and 2020’s comics included a header and footer directing the reader to UCU Twitter accounts and hashtags. Numbering the days of strike action was useful to keep track when strike days were scheduled as non-consecutive blocks of time, when planning ahead for a collective effort to get printed comics delivered and distributed in line with themed campaign days, and as the interruption of usual working routines meant many days became a snowy blur (see Figure 16.2). Working from agreed content and sending comics to the union branch communications team was a light-touch editorial process intended as a safety check for any inaccurate or unwise content, but in the event, only one comic was turned down as too niche—justifiably so: it combined a speech by an academic pensions expert with a dated Internet meme. I kept Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) in mind to help me maintain focus on the twin aims of making art for rapid mass low-cost production, and of being aware of Marxist critiques of the capitalist mode of production. To quote a favourite passage on how art will evolve as part of the process of bringing about a classless society: It would be wrong, therefore, to underestimate the combative value of such propositions. They oust a number of traditional concepts—such as creativity and genius, everlasting value and secrecy—concepts whose uncontrolled (and at the moment scarcely controllable) application leads to a processing

248  Lydia Wysocki

Figure 16.2  Day 5, 2018.

of the facts along the lines of Fascism. The following concepts, here introduced into art theory for the first time, differ from more familiar ones in that they are quite useless for the purposes of Fascism. They can, on the other hand, be used to formulate revolutionary demands in the politics of art. (Benjamin 1936, 2–3, emphasis in original) Benjamin highlights key points of what it means to have authenticity in making art, before addressing the difference between an auratic original work of art and reproductions of that original. His work is directly relevant to how my artistic choices were

Strike Comics 249 shaped by the politics and radical educative intent of industrial action, as well as a broader relevance to comics as a medium that is intertwined with mass reproduction. My art style was a choice that reflected the radical content of these comics, and the practicalities of speed, tiredness, stress, and cold. Rubber-stamp lettering is fun, especially when you’re angry, as well as an aesthetic choice whose inconsistencies cannot be fully replicated by computer fonts. My simplified shape-person style of drawing is influenced by Ivan Brunetti’s (2011) and Lynda Barry’s (2014) approaches, both of whom emphasize that everyone can make comics (see Figure 16.3). Black and white line art can usually print clearly on even the most temperamental of printers or photocopiers, which mattered because of the collaborative effort involved in printing each day’s comics. Though I have leaned on the aesthetics of protest zine making, none of this is a prescription of style for strike comics. Comrades on strike at various institutions made horror-style printed comics, drew comics in chalk and took a Situationist approach to inserting strike-specific slogans into pages from late 20th-century superhero comics; the following list indicates the range of approaches taken to making strike comics and zines within the same 2018–2020 UCU strikes: • • •

Monster Workload by Claire Dean (https://twitter.com/claireddean/ status/1237091226060566529) Daniel Muñoz Zech (https://twitter.com/dswanton/status/11996397 52615583750) Geoff Poole (https://twitter.com/happyplunderer/status/123777672 6899462145)

Figure 16.3  Day 9, 2018.

250  Lydia Wysocki • • •

Hector Mangas and Michael Sanders (https://hectormangas.com/comics-ucu.html) Sarah West (https://twitter.com/SarahWest_SEI/status/123819800 4445851650) What is the university for? A zine by the Social Policy and Social Work community (https://issuu.com/janelund123/docs/teach_out_zine_mk_11) coordinated by Ruth Patrick, Kate Brown, Jane Lund and Enrico Reuter

My intentionally simplistic art style does not inevitably ensure the anonymity of individuals, and Plowman and Stephen (2008) have previously discussed what comics-form representations of video data can offer for representations of interactions (see also: Woolhouse 2017; Allen 2015). In chatting with two separate colleagues featured in the comic, one embarrassedly realized he was featured in a crowd scene, and one proudly remembered the interaction depicted in the comic and wished she were more identifiable. Role-specific characters including security guards are generalized by their uniforms, not identifiable as individuals in the way a caricatured representation could be; fancy dress characters on picket lines could be identified through cross-referencing with their own Twitter posts, but I did not unmask anyone who had intentionally hidden their identity. Where quotes included testimonies from precariously-employed staff and from picket line mini-interviews with senior university staff—in stable employment—any identifying features were not associated with their quotes: this was out of caution not to treat non-striking colleagues unfairly, and not to risk inflaming emotions at a time when negotiations were ongoing. The purpose of documenting people’s actions in this simplified but not fully anonymized way was to build from specific interactions and speak to larger themes and structural issues. Drawing a visibly diverse cast of characters was achieved through the use of props and contexts as well as variations in body shape and size, hoping that this would serve to also imply a diversity of age, ethnicity, and gender that reflected union branch membership. An advantage of this approach was that it worked within the limitation of having no time for printer’s proofs of colour comics that could better depict a range of skin tones as a visual marker for diversity but always require careful print proofing. A consideration specific to industrial action in the UK HE was to ensure that professional services and academic-related colleagues—including administrators, librarians, IT staff and more—were visible, particularly as news media coverage habitually referred to a “lecturers’ strike” (Burns 2018) despite careful messaging from UCU.

Anecdotes (not data) and reflections When writing about my wider creative arts practice and academic research, this would typically be the point in a publication at which I would turn to present data evidencing readers’ responses to a given comic. For example, these strike comics came soon after my project to collaboratively make, distribute, and evidence the impact of a large-scale comics project about civil rights and political participation (Wysocki and Leat 2019). However, in writing about a project undertaken during industrial action, this present chapter instead shares

Strike Comics 251 anecdotes from comrades in place of a planned data collection strategy, interwoven with my own reflections. Feedback from fellow strikers was that comics were a positive part of efforts to make picket lines a lively space of constructive encounters with staff, students and the wider public, without eroding the necessary show of workers’ strength that picket lines present to management. In depicting my own steps towards understanding what it was like to take part in these strikes, my comics helped explain both the specific issues of the current strike and the broader purposes of industrial action to new audiences including non-striking colleagues, students, passers-by and children. Picketers commented on the benefits of daily comics for their own morale, recognizing themselves and their strike. Comics were also a conversation prompt when you did not yet know the people you were picketing with, or to engage with staff or students who tired of being offered the same UCU-branded leaflets as they crossed the same picket line each day but would take and read a new comic. An unanticipated use of strike comics was as a colouring activity and discussion prompt for children curious about why their grown-ups were not going to work as usual. Feedback from union branch officers was that daily comics were a gift for social media engagement as part of their morning Twitter routine, typically receiving more shares/likes/engagement metrics than text-only tweets— but lower metrics than the colleague who took on the persona of Solidarity Shark, a costumed character who used humour to boost morale. A social media high point was when a comic was retweeted by Billy Bragg.4 Officers also reported that some strike comics had been read by senior management and referenced in strike-related meetings. Pleasingly, the example they mentioned was Figure 16.4, in which a powerful message of systemic under-staffing is conveyed not by great sophistication in comics making but by two characters barely moving while having a conversation, with reference to the Real Housewives reality television franchise. Distribution issues were limited to the positive problem of running out of comics on some days, with the UCU office team learning to hold back a quantity of comics for the later shift of picketers. Non-striking colleagues aided our distribution by carrying comics onto campus and, though many comics were recycled after reading, many were left in buildings and pinned to bulletin boards and office doors for months after each strike period ended. My own experience was that making strike comics helped me understand how and why to take industrial action, and forged new connections with people at my own institution and further afield. Because my academic research includes the use of comics, I was initially anxious not to break the strike by undertaking what for me could be classified as a form of research outreach by demonstrating the usefulness of comics. That worry evaporated on seeing statisticians analyze proposed pension methodology changes, linguists make phonetically-spelled placards, and creative writers produce poems about the strike. Because my own fractional employment contract is precarious—as for many researchers, dependent on research income that is awarded through increasingly competitive grant

252  Lydia Wysocki

Figure 16.4  Day 3, 2019.

schemes—I was concerned about being too visible in my participation, until I realized that the majority of the colleagues I want to continue working with were engaged constructively with the strike, whether striking themselves or otherwise supportive. Better, I believed, to be honest in making comics under my own name not an attempted pseudonym, and to continue self-editing to make each comic not an angry diatribe but a fair depiction of issues and events. To further underline this fraught relationship between activism against precarity and survival within a precarious employment landscape, it has not escaped my notice that this book chapter highlighting experiences of using comics as a form of activism against precarious and otherwise inequitable employment will likely be assessed as a publication that forms part of my own career progression, and fed into the sector-wide research assessment metrics criticized in my strike comics.

Strike Comics 253 Making comics was well suited to a series of the UK HE strikes that used the joy inherent in multiple creative arts methods as a tool to build inter-generational solidarity. Placards and banners were an expected standard, plus poetry, dancing, fancy dress, baking, pavement chalk games and more. Comics contributed to this wider creative arts context in a way that was familiar both to older readers as activist zines and printed publications, and to younger adult readers online as webcomics and memes. The playfulness of the comics medium offered a light-hearted and immediate way to present the unpleasant realities of the workplace as a playground in which relational inequity is a seesaw and the (career) ladder of a slide is broken (see Figure 16.5). The

Figure 16.5  Day 11, 2020.

254  Lydia Wysocki participative nature of a self-publishing approach to making and distributing strike comics helped spread these messages far beyond what I could do alone, and creative involvement in collective action helped me to better combine my dual roles as a comics practitioner and an academic researcher. This model of working together in joyful solidarity is integral to the continued fight not only to curb the worst excesses of neoliberal capitalism but dismantle it and build better ways forward.

Notes

1. Thanks and solidarity to everyone involved in industrial action for fair pensions and working conditions in the period 2018–2020, particularly the Newcastle University UCU branch members involved in the production and distribution of the strike comics series featured in this chapter. 2. There is an entirely intentional similarity here to activist and parliamentarian Tony Benn’s five questions of political power: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you? 3. Strike comics 2018–2020, https://appliedcomicsetc.com/portfolio/strikecomics/. 4. Billy Bragg is a singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His habit of impromptu performances at picket lines—including at other universities as part of the industrial action that forms the content for this chapter—is immortalized in the oft-repeated comment that it’s not an official strike until Billy Bragg has turned up.

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Strike Comics 255 Connor, David J., and Ferri, Beth A. 2006. “Power, race and re/presentation: Political cartoons of the Brown era.” In Reading Resistance: Discourses of Exclusion in Desegregation & Inclusion Debates, edited by Beth A. Ferri and David J. Connor. Berna: Peter Lang. Daniels, J. 1989. Breaking Free. London: EM Books and Freedom Press. Day, Dorothy. 1952. “Poverty and precarity.” The Catholic Worker, (May 1952) 2, no. 6. https://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/articles/633.html Dickson, Benjamin, and Wilson, Sean Michael. 2013. Fight the Power! A Visual History of Protest amongst the English Speaking Peoples. Oxford: New Internationalist. DiPaolo, Marc, ed. 2018. Working-Class Comic Book Heroes: Class Conflict and Populist Politics in Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Embury, Gary, and Mario Minichiello. 2018. Reportage Illustration: Visual Journalism. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Gray, Maggie. 2020. “The freedom of the press: Comics, labor and value in the Birmingham Arts Lab”. In Critical Directions in Comics Studies, edited by Thomas Giddens. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Harris, Paul. 1977. The DC Thomson Bumper Fun Book. Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing. Hidalgo, LeighAnna. 2015. “Augmented fotonovelas: Creating new media as pedagogical and social justice tools.” Qualitative Inquiry 21, no. 3: 300–314. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1077800414557831 McKnight, Heather. 2019. “The Sussex campus ‘Forever Strike’: Estrangement, resistance and utopian temporality.” Studies in Arts and Humanities 5, no. 1: 145–172. ISSN 2009-826X. McNicol, Sarah. 2020. “Exploring trauma and social haunting through community comics creation.” In Documenting Trauma in Comics, edited by Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind. London: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Megoran, Nick, and Mason, Olivia. 2020. Second Class Academic Citizens: The Dehumanising Effects of Casualisation in Higher Education. London: University and College Union. Mickwitz, Nina. 2016. Documentary Comics: Graphic Truth-Telling in a Skeptical Age. London: Palgrave McMillan. Millar, Kathleen M. 2017. “Toward a critical politics of precarity.” Sociology Compass 11, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12483 Plowman, Lydia, and Christine Stephen. 2008. “The big picture? Video and the representation of interaction.” British Educational Research Journal 34, no. 4: 541–565. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920701609422 Positive Negatives. 2020. About Positive Negatives. Accessed July 26, 2021. https://positivenegatives.org/about/ Repetti, Massimo. 2007. “African wave: Specificity and cosmopolitanism in African comics.” African Arts 40, no. 2: 16–35. Rius. 2003. Marx for Beginners. New York: Pantheon Books. Schilt, Kristen. 2003. “‘I’ll resist with every inch and every breath’ girls and zine making as a form of resistance.” Youth & Society 35, no. 1: 71–97. https://doi.org/10.1177% 2F0044118X03254566 Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat. Bloomsbury Revelations. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

256  Lydia Wysocki Woolhouse, Clare. 2017. “Conducting photo methodologies: Framing ethical concerns relating to representation, voice and data analysis when exploring educational inclusion with children.” International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 42(1): 2–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2017.1369511 Wysocki, Lydia. 2021. “Applied comics”. In Key Terms in Comics Studies, edited by Simon Grennan, Erin La Cour and Rik Spanjers. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wysocki, Lydia, and David Leat. 2019. “Collaborative comic as boundary object: The creation, reading, and uses of Freedom City Comics” [“Cómic colaborativo como Objeto de Frontera: la creación, lectura y usos de Freedom City Comics”]. Tebeosfera 3 (10). https://www.tebeosfera.com/documentos/collaborative_comic_as_boundary_object_ the_creation_reading_and_uses_of_freedom_city_comics.html

Index

Abate, Michelle Ann 29n1 abortion 69, 75, 167, 205–207, 209n1 abstraction 52, 54, 55, 57, 182–183, 215 achievement 108, 134, 221; objects of 12, 107, 119 activism 13, 74–75, 162n4, 192, 205, 208, 240, 242–244, 252–253, 254n2, 254n4; feminism; see also industrial action; strike comics adaptation 11, 23, 31, 33, 126, 146 adolescents 24, 127, 234; writing memoir comics 107–121; see also coming-of-age; youth adulthood 37, 40, 47, 69, 77, 95, 99, 130, 145; journey to 45–47 Aencre 183–185, 195n2 aesthetics 134, 170, 201, 249, 236 African Americans 13, 25, 117, 125, 129 137–139; as comics authors 146; demonstrations of 139; living conditions in the 1950s 142–143,145; as “rioters” 140; segregation of 139, 144–145; situation of young 140; see also Black supervillains Africans 211–213, 222–223 Agard, Chancellor 125 Age 11, 32, 37, 40, 42, 47, 67, 70, 86n2, 94, 102, 194, 203, 212 agency 4, 6, 12, 35, 80, 84–85, 104, 166, 228, 244; see also emancipation Agrimbau, Diego 173 Ahmed, Maaheen 6, 101 Ahmed, Sara 3, 67, 70 Albertini, Eliana 158–159, 162n10, 163n34 Albiero, Olivia 212–213, 217–218, 220 Alcatena, Quique 165 Alcobre, María 200 Alden, Sam 191 Aldridge, Alan 23

Alias (character) 131 Alien triste (sad alien) 165, 167, 170 alienation 12, 134; of comics creators 129, 169; of gifted students 107, 120–121; objects of 107, 119–120 Allison, Anne 47–48 Alverson, Brigid 53, 55 Amamiya, Karin 47–48 analepsis 218–220 Añez, Jeanine 199 animation 161, 178, 182,184 Anna 204 anthologies 152, 154, 158, 160–161, 162n10, 163n32, 205, 206, 207, 209n8 anxiety 48, 64–65 Anzaldúa, Gloria 204 Aplomb 181, 189 aporia 74, 229 Argentina 7, 11, 13, 165, 167–168, 170, 173, 175, 199–200, 202, 206, 208, 209n1 Armano, Emiliana 73 Artifactual Literacies (AL) 107–108 Asano, Inio 45–46, 48–57 Asian Americans 13, 227 Asselin, Éric 188 Ašta Šmé 91–95, 97–98, 100, 102 Atkinson, Bill 182 Auster, Paul 68 authenticity 76, 126, 157, 171, 174, 247, 248 authoritarianism 32, 35, 42 autobiography 6, 8–10, 120, 153, 154–155, 157–158, 162n7, 163n19, 171, 176, 229, 245; ambiguous authenticity of 157–159, 171; and humor 171; in post-modern culture 157; as self-discovery 121; and witnessing 120; see also memoir comics; self-representation; slice-of-life

258  Index autofiction see autobiography autographics see autobiography Avengers, the 129–130 awareness 7, 8, 50, 63, 127, 130, 166, 212, 221, 224, 244 Bacilieri, Paolo 162n16 Backderf, Derf 13, 227–237, 238n5 Bacon, Francis 79 Baetens, Jan 157–158 Báez Sosa, Fernando 200 Baeza, Amanda 181 Bagge, Peter 9 Bagieu, Pénélope 7, 11, 31–39, 41–43 Bagnarelli, Bianca 162n11 Baizán, Mariana 208 Baker, Bas 209 Balboa, Nicoz 86 Baldi, Barbara 162n16 Barata, Julia 207 Barbieri, Daniele 157 Baricordi, Andrea 163n17 Baril, Joseph 192 Barker, Megg 75 Barnes, Martha 200 Baronciani, Alessandro 163n29 Barry, Lynda 110, 243, 249 Bartual, Roberto 218 Bata, Gabor 195 Bates, Cary 132 Batgirl (character) 133–134 Batman (character) 133, 138, 167 Baudry, Julien 162n8 Bauman, Zygmunt 2, 4, 12, 65, 75 Bayor, Ronald H. 128 Beaty, Bart 138 Beaulac, Mario 179 Beaulieu, Jimmy 178–179, 185, 187–189, 194 Bechdel, Alison 9–10, 243 Bédard, Sophie 181, 187–188, 191 bedroom 62, 63, 82, 232–233 Ben Lazreg, Houssem 214 Benasso, Sebastiano 77 Bendis, Brian Michael 131 Benjamin, Walter 174, 247–248 Benton, Mike 130 Berardi, Franco “Bifo” 3–5, 85 Berlant, Lauren 3–4, 9, 11, 60–61, 64–65, 68–69 Berndt, Enno 45 Berndt, Jacqueline 45, 49–51, 58n6 Bezhanova, Olga 61 Bhabha, Jacqueline 94

Biagi, Lucia 152 Bilbao, Jon 8 Bile, Abdi 217–218 Billari, Francesco C. 83 Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary 9–10, 163n19 biography 13, 79, 154,155, 158, 161, 165, 212–214, 218, 224, 245; as mediated narrative 171, 212; and remembering 103; see also graphic narratives Biondi, Flavia 12, 74, 76–77, 162n11 biopolitics 64, 75 Birk, Tammy 101–102 Black communities see African Americans Black Panther (character) 137, 146, 147n8 Black supervillains 12, 129, 137, 139–146; in classic Marvel era 137; integration and 138; and racism 137, 144, 146; and real-life problems 137–139; as short-lived characters 140–141; and slums 142; see also African Americans; precarity, superheroic; superheroes Blackmore, Susan J. 166 Blake, Quentin 31 Blaxploitation 129, 137, 145 bodies 1, 8, 41, 45, 52–54, 55–56, 64, 75, 80, 112, 115, 129, 155, 158, 230–231, 233–234; disposable 13, 228–229; non-white 229, 234; see also death, social Boffo, Paula 205, 208 Bogdanska, Daria 9 bohemia 9, 22, 72 Boland, Catherine 109 Bolaño, Roberto 62 Bolsonaro, Jair 199 Bolter, Jay David 215 Bonomi, Giuseppe 151, 163n23 Boop, Betty 24 borders 93, 223–224, 247; see also Mediterranean Sea Boschi, Luca 162n13 Boseman, Chadwick 146n3 Bossé, Luc 185, 191–192 Botana, Raúl Demonte 200 Bourdieu, Pierre 73, 240 Bowie, David 214 Boyle, Lizzie 243 Bradehoft, Joseph 230 Bragg, Billy 251 Brancato, Sergio 162n13 Breccia, Cristina 200 Breccia, Patricia 200 Brenner, Robin 43

Index 259 Brienza, Casey 243 Browder, Earl 25 Brown, Buster 24 Brown, Hobie see Prowler, The Brown, Jeffrey A. 146 Brown, Michael 234 Brunetti, Ivan 249 Bruni, Attila 73 Brunner, Edward 24–25 Budgeon, Shelley 75 Buffolente, Lina 151 bullying 27, 42, 50, 94, 107, 112 Burf, David F. 19 Burns, Judith 250 Burroughs, William 165, 172 Burstein, Noah 130 Buscema, John 139 Buscema, Sal 144 Bustos, Luis 8 Butler, Judith 1–2, 5–6, 14, 32, 48, 74, 228–229 Butler, Octavia E. 146 Cadène, Thomas 8 Cadieux, Xavier 191 Cage, Luke see Power Man Calloni, Marina 34–26, 38 Camelli, Laura “La Came” 153, 162n11 Cameron, Bryan 67 camp 185, 204 Campbell, Eddie 9, 237 Campbell, Jamal 146 Campbell-Brown, Veronica 211 Canada 11, 92, 178 Canady, Kate 109 Caniff, Milton 19–20, 25 Canottiere, Lorena 162n16 Capella, Danielle 75 capitalism 2–4, 7–8, 13, 20–23, 27, 32, 42, 64, 126, 174, 204, 242, 254 Captain America (character) 141–145 Captain America 141; Captain America and the Falcon 138, 142–145 Carbone, Valeria L. 139 Cardoso, Daniel 75 caricature 115, 137, 168, 234, 250 Carroll, Peter N. 26 cartooning 52–53, 155, 173, 183, 243 cartoonish style 31, 37, 41, 46, 50, 53–55, 57 cartoonists see comics authors Cash, Johnny 212 Casper, Jody 143

Cassot, Agustina 206 Castrée, Geneviève 18 Castro, Fidel 212 Cathon 191 Catozzella, Giuseppe 13, 212, 214, 220, 222–223 Cattaneo, Claudio 66 Cattani, Francesco 162n16 Cazador (character) 206, 209n7 Chan, David W. 109 Charest, Jean 191 Chick on Comics 200 childhood 11–12, 35, 37, 61–62, 64, 93, 95, 98, 99, 183; in comic strips 20, 24; and growing up 46; and ideology 19–28; institutionalized 91–93, 100–104; and oppressive structures 33; precarity 31–32, 38, 42–43; progressive 23–27; recollections of 65; representations of 28–29, 145, 220; and trauma 91, 92, 99–100, 155; vulnerable 11; see also orphanages; Roma children see childhood Chinaski, Caro 209n3 Chute, Hillary L. 5–6, 8–9, 41, 61, 99–101, 107, 129, 155, 157, 230, 237 Cioffi, Jessica 162n11 civil rights 12, 137, 230 Claesson, Christian 10 Claremont, Chris 7, 132–133 class 2–3, 11–12, 19, 32, 35, 60, 63, 120, 126, 130, 134, 140, 145, 200, 202–204, 240, 242–243; middle 13, 62, 203; working 2, 24–25, 27, 62, 128, 130, 134, 140, 143, 170; see also precariat Claviez, Thomas 5 Clítoris 205 closure 50, 95, 200, 218, 231, 237 Clowes, Daniel 155, 171 Cocca, Carolyn 131 cognitariat 2–3; see also precariat Cohen, Harold 183 Cohn, Neil 51–53 Coipel, Olivier 131 Colan, Gene 142–143 Colangelo, Nicholas 109 Colaone, Sara 163n17 collage 120, 168, 170, 174 collectives 7, 12, 91–92, 151, 160, 163n21, 163n32, 181, 185, 189, 192, 200, 202, 205, 208, 254 Colleta, Vincent 142

260  Index comic books 7, 126, 130, 133, 138, 141, 143, 145–146, 152; Bronze Age 130, 132; Golden Age 126; as mass products 12, 138; Silver Age 127; see also graphic narratives comic strips 7, 11, 19–20, 23–24, 25–26, 28, 29, 181, 208 comics authors 3, 8, 9, 108, 167, 170, 174, 186, 188, 191, 200; fans identification with 175–176; as mercenaries 129; as precariat 2–3, 6–8, 161; romanticization of 170; self-deprecation of 170, 173; selfpromotion of 156, 173; see also collectives; fumettiste; LGBTIQ+; precarity; women cartoonists; specific names comics market 6–7, 10, 12, 45, 51, 62, 151–153, 161, 175, 178, 209; see also comics production; publishers comics production 13, 45, 126, 154, 160, 172, 178–179, 197, 201–202, 205–207, 240, 243–244, 247, 254n1; see also comics market; publishers comics scene 161, 173, 175, 189, 194, 199, 200, 209; alternative 155, 178, 179 coming-of-age 11, 46, 50, 120 community 5, 13, 35, 93–94, 116–117, 119–120, 125, 130, 134, 141, 144, 161, 165, 168, 175–176, 178, 182, 183, 185, 187–188, 192–194, 199–200, 202, 206–207, 227, 229, 236, 242, 244 conservatism 11, 20, 22, 24–25, 28–29, 42 consumerism 35, 66–67, 132–133 Contrera, Laura 201 Copi 200 Corbisiero, Fabio 86 Correia, Carla 75 counterculture 8, 130 Crenshaw, Ellen T. 14n1 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 203 crisis 9, 11–12, 25, 26, 60, 61, 63–65, 68–70, 76–77, 81, 83–84, 182, 194, 199, 202–203, 205, 208, 227–228, 245; of 2008 9, 11, 60, 178; adolescents writing about 108–109, 121; and austerity measures 60, 67, 73; economic 13, 60, 68, 73, 130, 133, 206; environmental 35; epistemological 101; existential 11; and the Great Depression 19, 21, 25; in Italy 154; migrant 212; objects of 12, 119–120; ordinariness 60; in Spain 60, 61, 68; see also precarity; youth

Crouch, Colin 68 Crucifix, Benoît 6, 101 cruel optimism 3–4, 61, 64–65, 67–68, 70; see also Berlant, L. Crumb Robert 8–9, 163n19, 170–171 Cruse, Howard 10, 230 Cuba, Miguel 53 Cuello, Nicolás 210 Curie, Marie 158 Cvetkovic, Bowman 132 Cviklová, Lucie 94 Czech Republic 12, 91–94 Dahl, Roald 11, 31–33, 41, 43 Dahmer, Jeffrey 13, 227–230, 232–234, 236–237, 238n4 Dahmer, Joyce 232 Dahmer, Lionel 236 Dallavalle, Sara 155 Damonte Botana, Raúl see Copi Daniels, J. 244 Dapueto, Idelba 200 Daredevil (character) 127, 131 Darsø, Lotte 104 Davies, Dominique 96 Davies, Matt 69 Davis, Eleanor 8 Dawkins, Richard 166 De Giovanni, Massimiliano 163n17 De Santis, Alessandra “Nova” 156, 160, 162n11 Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction 48 Deadly Nightshade (character) 138, 144–145 Dean, Claire 249 death 1, 31, 32, 42, 68, 81, 127, 132, 178, 212, 214, 218, 220, 223, 228–229, 236; social 228–229 Debowicz, Maia 207–208 Deflorian, Anna 152 Dejasse, Erwin 154–155, 157, 160, 163n22 Del Bourgo, Maurice 24, 27 Delisle, Guy 157, 243 Delius 209n3 Della Corte, Carlo 162n13 Delporte, Julie 179, 181–182, 185, 187, 189, 191–192, 194 Dénommé, Ariane 190 Denson, Shane 154 Denton, Nancy A. 143 depression 2, 48, 55 Der Traum von Olympia 13, 211 Dester, Gisela 200 Diamond Head (character) 138, 141–142

Index 261 Diamondback (character) 138, 145 Dickson, Benjamin 243 dictatorship 35, 66, 70, 200 Diedrich, Lisa 96, 104 digital art 182–184, 192 digital comics see webcomics Dipaolo, Marc 243 Disalvo, Lucas 201 discrimination 2, 7, 8, 10, 73, 74, 93–94, 104, 139–140, 163n21, 200, 208 Disney, Walt 165 distribution 27, 163n28, 199, 205, 244–245, 251, 254n1 Ditko, Steve 7, 127–128, 138 diversity 14n1, 92, 134, 152, 201, 250 DIY practices 152–153, 160–161, 177, 199; see also self-publishing; zines documentary 8, 101–102, 159, 213, 214, 242–244 Domingo, Pep “Nadar” 9, 60–64, 66–70 Don’t be a Gadjo! 91, 94, 97, 101–103 Dord, Michal 91, 97 Doucet, Julie 9, 170, 188 Doxtator, James 230 Dreschler, Debbie 9 Duffy, Damian 146 Duncan, Nancy 109 Duncan, Taine 31, 41–42 Duque, Iván 199 Dykes to Watch Out For 9 Eaglestone, Robert 5 Earle, Harriet 231, 233 Eisner, Will 64, 66 El mundo a tus pies 11 El Refaie, Elisabeth 6, 8–9, 157, 163n19, 171, 176 Elzas, Sarah 32, 41–42 emanata 61 emancipation 11, 62, 77, 133–134; see also agency emotions 6, 46, 54, 57, 62, 73–74, 108, 158, 232, 250 employment 2, 14, 23, 48, 50, 63, 127, 140, 240, 246, 250; academic 240–242, 245–254; access to 62, 143; forced 93; and identity 48, 63; imbalance 154; lack of 55; long-term 61; part-time 3, 7, 140; precarious 1, 2, 14, 47, 61, 129, 139, 240, 245; segregation of 94; traditional 47; see also precarity; underemployment; unemployment empowerment 5, 203–204, 207

Englehart, Steve 144–145 enthusiasm 3, 82, 170, 174 Escobar, Josep 7 espectración 165, 172 Espinosa Miñoso, Yuderkys 201 ethics 1, 4–5, 40, 41, 64, 70, 74–76, 80, 133, 158, 160, 221, 237, 240 ethnicity 2, 42, 93, 212, 245, 250; see also African Americans; Asian Americans; Hispanic; minorities; Roma Etter, Lukas 217 Evans, Brad 231 everyday life 9, 20, 46, 48–49, 51, 57, 108, 207; struggles 61 exclusion 40, 92, 139, 200–201, 203–204, 231 Exit Wounds 10 Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers 9 Facebook 60, 62, 70, 152, 161, 165, 167, 172, 176, 176n4, 205, 209n6, 215, 217–218, 223–224; see also Instagram; social media fairy tales 32–33, 42 Falcon, the (character) 125–126, 141–145, 147n6 Fana, Marta 77 Faniel, Lucie 179 fans 125–126, 132, 174–175, 217 Fantastic Four, the (characters) 128–130 fantasy 3–4, 8, 31, 65, 101, 152 fanzines see zines Faraci, Tito 162n5 Federici, Silvia 73 Femimutancia 208 feminism 41–43, 73–75, 126, 130–132, 152, 156–157, 162n4, 163n21, 199, 200–201, 203–205; and posthumanism 41–43; see also activism; feminist comics; gender feminist comics 31, 152, 158, 163n21, 205; see also specific names and specific titles Fernández-Savater, Amador 69, 73 Ferri, Beth A. 243 Ferrick, Margot 181 festivals 13, 56, 62, 151–152, 154–155, 160, 163n28, 178, 185, 187, 192, 199, 205, 206 Fisher, Ham 19 Fisher, Mark 2, 4 Fiumara, Max 173 Fletcher, Brenden 133–134 fluidity 74–76, 79, 83, 228

262  Index Foley-Nicpon, Megan 120 Fonte 180, 185, 190, 192 Footnotes in Gaza 243 formats 31, 45, 49, 74, 99–100, 126, 151–152, 154, 160, 179, 181, 199, 202, 205, 243; poor image 201–202, 205 foster-care institutions see orphanages Foster-Dimino, Sophia 191 Foucault, Michel 64, 68 fracture 92, 96, 97, 100, 102, 119 fragmentation 96 France 32, 58n5, 62, 162n8, 162n14, 165, 178, 200 Franco, Francisco 7, 27 Frankie Doodle 23 Franquin 181 Frey, Julien 62 Friedrich, Gary 144 From Hell 237 FumettiBrutti 10, 86n5, 157, 160, 162n4, 163n26 fumettiste 12, 151, 153–154, 157, 160, 161; see also women cartoonists Fun Home 10 Fuss Diana 238n3 Fussnoten 10 future 3–5, 21, 35, 47, 61, 63, 65–68, 70, 73, 76, 79, 85, 91, 110, 121, 134, 144–145, 154–155, 170, 194, 235; loss of 68 Gabos, Otto 163 Gadafi, Muamar el 220 Gaeth, Julie 109 Gage, Christos N. 144 Gagné, Nana Okura 47 Gago, Verónica 69, 202 Galaxina, Andrea 6 Galli, Marco 160 Gallino, Luciano 73 Gambetti, Zeynep 5–6 Ganguly, Somrita 91–92 Garcés, Marina 68 Garcia, Reverend 144 García, Santiago 10 García, Verónica see Nikka García Campayo, Javier 60 Gardner, Jared 20, 171 Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie 233 Garner, Eric 234 Gaudreault, André 182 Gauna, Rubén 205 Gauthier 10 Gaydos, Michael 131

gaze 4, 38, 80, 204–205, 232–233, 235, 237 gekiga 8, 50 gender 2, 11–12, 29n1, 31–32, 41–42, 55, 74, 76, 86n5, 103, 115, 120, 126, 132, 153–156, 158, 161, 200–204, 212, 242, 245, 250; see also feminism génération precaire 73 gentrification 7, 133–134 Gérin, Maxime 190, 195 Giacoia, Frank 142 Giard, Vicent 13, 178–195 Gide, André 63 giftedness 12, 107–109, 114–120 Gili, Margalida 60 Gilmore, Leigh 120 Giroux, Henry A. 231 Giusta mezura, La 76, 78–79 Glidden, Sarah 10 Gloeckner, Phoebe 9 Gómez, Marian 208 good life 2–4, 11, 61, 64–65, 69; see also Berlant, L. Goodnight Punpun 45–46, 48–53, 57, 58n5–6 Goodwin, Archie 129–130 Gordon, Barbara see Batgirl Grace, Dominick 178 Graham, Billy 129–130, 146, 147n8 graphic narratives 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 45, 157, 229, 230 234, 237; applied 243; as autobiography 157; collaborative nature of 4–5; as documentary 9, 12, 101, 159; and ethical solicitation 5, 14; and fiction genres 7; more gender-inclusive 31; as graphic journalism 10, 110, 215; as graphic novels 7, 8, 32, 74, 76, 85, 92, 100, 146, 152–153, 173, 175; and internationalization 10; and linearity 6, 75; mainstream 7, 13, 26, 45, 46, 50, 57, 74, 132, 138, 151, 158, 160, 161, 202, 206, 209; minorities in 9; poetics of precarious community in 5; political 7–8, 243; as protest 14, 178, 185, 192, 249; and traumatic experiences 100; turn to ethics in 5; and younger generations 9–10; see also autobiography; comic books; graphic biography; precarity; precariousness; underground comix; specific titles Gray, Harold 7, 20–23, 28, 29n1 Great Depression 19, 21–24, 26, 28 Greco, Cristian 154, 157–159, 162n7 Green, Justin 9, 10, 163n19

Index 263 Griffith, Bill 8 Groensteen, Thierry 70, 107 Gross, Jessica 61 Gross, Miraca 109 Grusin, Richard 215 Guba, Egon 109 Guerrero, Richard 230 Guglielmo, Laura 160, 162n11 Guillaume, Benoît 191 Gutiérrez, Lucas Fauno 207–208 Habermas, Jürgen 74 Habrand, Tanguy 189 Haft, Hertzko 212 Hagen, Dan 147n8 Hajská, Markéta 93 Halberstam, Jack 9 Hall, Richard 132 Han, Byung-Chul 2, 82 Hanley, Tim 131 Hanselmann, Simon 9, 155 happiness duty 3; see also Ahmed, S. Happy Hooligan 7 Haraway, Donna 75 Hard Tomorrow, The 8 Hardt, Michael 2 Harlem (New York City) 129, 141–145 Harris, Eric 236 Harvey, Robert C. 20, 26 Hate 9 hate speech 13, 35, 199–200 Hatfield, Charles 96, 170–171, 174, 175 Haun, Alyssa 92–95 Head, Glenn 92, 102 Heer, Jeet 28–29 Hellman, Michel 185 Henderson, Scott B. 102–103 Hergé 181 Hernandez, Gilbert 171 Herndon, Holly 183 hero’s journey 11, 57 Hessel, Stéphane 6 heteronormativity 10, 200, 204, 207 Hewlett, Jamie 155 Hicks, Steven 227, 229–231 Hidalgo, Leigh Anna, 244 hikikomori 48 Hikoboshi 56 Hird, Alison 32, 41–42 Hirshman, Linda R. 75 Hispanic 13, 227 Historietas reales 205 hobos 7, 167 Hoffman, Eric 178

Holmberg, Ryan 58n2 homophobia 10, 201, 206, 209, 209n8 homosexuality 9, 228, 229, 231–232, 238n4 Hooks, Bell 204 Hoover, Herbert 21, 25 Howe, Sean 127, 147n8 Hudlin, Reginald 147n8 Hudson, Laura 179 Hughes, Langston 146n1 Hughey, Matthew W. 7 Hugs, Tony 230 Hulk, The 127, 138 human rights 223 humour 7, 9, 43, 114, 165, 171, 173–176, 200, 242, 251 Hunkel, Ma 126 Hunt, Joan 37 Huston, Shaun 213 Ibarra, María 207 Ichiguchi, Keiko 163 iconography 60, 108, 168 identity 6, 12, 13, 60, 63–65, 69, 77, 83, 92–93, 103, 107–108, 110, 120, 127, 129, 131, 133, 138, 203, 232, 250; building 12; dissident 13, 205; gendered 75; insecurities 12, 74; LGBTIQ+ 9, 201, 203–204, 207; occupational 3; morphing 47–57; and self-perception 120–121, 153–156, 161; sexual 2, 10, 11, 204, 207–208; and trauma 9; see also precariousness; precarity; vulnerability ideology 2, 20, 22–25, 28–29, 81, 167; Communist 24, 25, 66; left-wing 23, 25, 200, 254n4; right-wing 23, 151 Igort 162 illness 1, 37, 48, 232 Illouz, Eva 75–76, 81, 86 immigrants see migrants individuality 81, 215, 224 industrial action 240, 243–245, 250–251, 254; see also activism; strike comics; trade unions inequality 60, 67, 92, 156, 245 insecurity 2, 4, 12, 47, 65, 74; labour 1, 12, 132, 254, 161, 173; see also precarity Instagram 154, 165, 171, 174–176; see also social media intergenerational conflict 66 intersectionality 12, 42–43, 120, 203 intertextuality 70, 177 invisibility 155, 208, 228, 230 invisibilization 206, 208

264  Index involvement 57, 171, 254 Ironheart (character) 134 Italy 7, 11, 58n5, 73–75, 151–154, 162n1, 162n8, 162n13 Itzin, Catherine 31 Iwata-Weickgenannt, Kristina 10 Jansen, Monica 74 Japan 7, 11, 45–48, 51, 57, 178, 181 Jemisin, N. K. 146 Jennings, Collier 127 Jennings, John 146 Jiménez, Jesús 61, 64, 70 Jirásek, Ivo 95 Johnson, Lyndon B. 139 Johnson, Tilda see Deadly Nightshade Johnston, Paddy 243 Joly, Benoît 188 Jones, Jessica see Alias Jourdy, Camille 155 journey 47, 57, 83, 84, 98, 130, 131, 153, 211, 213, 215, 218, 219, 222, 246 Jubilee (character) 132–133 juxtaposition 62, 101, 103, 167, 174 Kachorsky, Danielle 31 Katin, Miriam 10 Katzenjammer Kids 24 Kelts, Roland 52 Kempton, Sally 138 Kennedy, Bobby 137 Kérchy, Anna 40 Kerr, Bethany A. 109, 120 Khan, Kamala (character) 134 Kidman, Shawna 129 Killmonger (character) 137 King, Martin Luther 137 Kirby, Jack 7 Klebold, Dylan 236 Kleist, Reinhard 13, 212–224 Knight, Keith 243 Knox, Sara L. 236 Kobabe, Maia 10 Kohl, Paul R. 131 Kominsky, Aline 9 Kortsarz, Eleonora 208 Kravtsov, Ilya 211 Kress, Gunther 233, 235, 238n7 Krug, Teresa 212–213 Kukkonen, Karin 32–33 Kumar, Kamayani 100 Lacan, Jacques 81 Lachapelle, Nicolas 180, 182 Lacy, Oliver 230

Lagos, Clara 209n3 Lane, Lois (character) 131–132 Lantz, James Heath 147n8 Lanza, Adam 236 Lanzarini, Francesca 160 Larone, Mathieu 191, 195 Lassus, Oriane 187, 191 Laubeová, Laura 94 Leat, David 250 Lee, Stan 7, 127–128, 138–139, 141–144, 146 Leeuwen, Theo van 109, 233, 235 Lefèvre, Pascal 213, 215 legitimation crisis 64, 69; see also Habermas, J. Leonkpow 179 LGBTIQ+ 10, 13, 199–201, 203, 205–209; see also minorities; queer; sexual identity liminality 11, 178 Lindner, Christopher 133 Linsey, Errol 230 liquid modernity 2, 6, 12; see also Bauman, Z. Little Annie Rooney, 23 Little Lefty 11, 19–20, 23–27 Little Orphan Annie 7, 11, 19–20, 22–29 Loge, Lilly 209n4 Loge, Ulla 209n4 Lombroso, Paola 151 Longoni, Ana 202 López Alós, Javier 3 Lorey, Isabell 2 Loubat, Františka 95, 97, 102 love 11, 12, 46, 58n7, 70, 74–76, 79–80, 85, 86n5; as battleground 11; and individualism 85; linear 75, 85; liquid 12, 74–75; rhizomatic 76, 85; romantic 12, 74, 77, 207 Luckhurst, Roger 101–102 Ludewig, Julia 214 Lumineau, Sébastien 191 Lund, Jane 250 M’Baku the Man-Ape (character) 141 Macellari, Elisa 162n11 Mackie, Anthony 125 Magaraggia, Sveva 77 Maitena 200 Malchiodi, Cathy A. 104 Malle, Mirion 191 Mamone, Julia see Femimutancia Mancini, Pedro 13, 165, 167–176 manga 8, 11, 45–46, 48–53, 57–58, 58n2, 58n3, 58n6, 151, 155, 162n1

Index 265 Mangas, Hector 250 Manning, Shaun 134 Marden, Matthew D. 93–94 marginalization 13, 69, 138–139, 143, 203, 208, 243 Marion, Philippe 80, 158, 182 Maroh, Jul 191 Marras, Giorgia 162n11, 162n14, 163n24, 163n29 Marsily, Noémie 191 Martín, Marcos 8 Martínez-Pinna, Eduardo 8 Maruo, Suehiro 50, 58n6 Masi, Giovanni 82 Mason, Olivia 245 Matsumoto, Masahiko 8 Matt, Joe 9, 170 Mattotti, Lorenzo 162n16 Mazzoni, Guido 81 Mazzucchelli, David 155 McAra, Catriona 40 McCloud, Scott 51–53, 55, 62, 95, 129, 179, 182, 215 McDuffie, Dwayne 145 McElvaine, Robert 19, 23 McKnight, Heather 245 McNulty, Mike 128 Mediterranean Sea 13, 211, 213, 218, 220, 222–223; see also borders Medway, Jim 244 Megoran, Nick 245 Meltzer, Milton 21 memes 13, 165–167, 169–176, 206, 246, 253; as self-deprecation 170, 173; as self-promotion 173 memoir comics 8, 107–108, 110, 119–120, 163n19, 171, 224; see also autobiography; slice-of-life memory 6, 9, 32, 64–65, 92, 95, 101–102, 157, 159, 181, 229 Meneghello, Luigi 158 Menetti, Sara 157, 161, 162n11, 163n26 Menga, Filippo 96 Menini, Elisa 162n11 Menu, Jean-Christophe 154 Merola, Caroline 179 Mestman, Mariano 202 metamorphoses 38, 40–41, 173 metaphor 6, 9, 32, 64, 65, 92, 95, 101, 102, 157, 159, 181, 229 metonymy 57, 167 Meyer, Christina 154 Meyer, Moe 204 Mickwitz, Nina 6, 12, 221–222, 231

migrants 2, 10, 13, 132, 134, 140, 142, 143, 214, 218, 222; crisis 212, death of 212; humanization of 212; as invaders 211; othered 212; in stories raising awareness 212, 221–223; see also Mediterranean Sea; refugees; violence Milani, Alice 152, 158, 160, 162n11, 163n26 millennials 48, 77; see also youth Minichiello, Mario 242 minorities 2, 9, 11, 25, 93, 139, 228–231; as victims of violence 229–230; see also ethnicity; LGBTIQ+; race Misiroglu, Gina 130 misogyny 31, 206, 209, 209n7 Miyazawa, Takeshi 134 Modan, Rutu 10 Moebius 181 Mondo Naif 155, 163n17 Monje, Pedro 60 Mooney, Jim 139 Moongirl (character) 134 Moore, Alan 237 moral outrage 57, 167 Moreno, Lenin 199 Moreno-Caballud, Luis 67 Moreu, Mamen 9 Morini, Cristina 73, 85 Morotti, Margherita 162 Morrison, Grant 165 Ms. Marvel (character) 130, 134 Muci, Roberta “Joel” 156, 160, 162n11 Muhova, Hristova 162 Multani, Angelie 100 multimodality 31, 53, 95, 108, 238n7 Mulvey, Laura 80 Muñoz Zech, Daniel 249 Muradov, Roman 191 murder 50, 55–56, 84, 127, 132, 200, 227–232, 236–237 Murgia, Annalisa 73 My Friend Dahmer 13, 227–232, 234–237 Nagata, Kabi 10 Nama, Adilifu 137 Nancy, Jean–Luc 5 Nanni, Giacomo 162n16 Narcisse, Evan 145–146 Neaud, Fabrice 10 Negri, Antonio 2 neoliberalism 6, 8, 68, 73, 75–76, 203–204 New Deal 19, 20, 22, 29 Newbold, Jamie 129 Niccolai, Viola 160

266  Index Nicolaides, Becky M. 25 Nidasio, Grazia 162n16 Nikka 208 Nikolajeva, Maria 40 Niño Oruga 169, 171, 173 Nocenti, Ann 76 Nómada, Flora 208 Non so chi sei 79, 81 non-fiction 8, 10, 13, 108, 158; see also graphic narratives non-grievable lives 1, 14, 229 Noomin, Diane 9 Novia, Natalia 207 O’Keefe, Meghan 125 O’Neil, Dennis 131 Obom 181 Obomsawin, Diane 179 Ocelot, Catherine 189 Olazaba, Victor 128 Oliver, Patricio 205–206 Olympic Games 13, 211, 213, 217–218, 220 Omar, Hodan 213, 218 Omar, Samia Yusuf 13, 211–215, 217–218, 220–224 Ono, Hideki 52 Onomatopoeia 11, 60 Opper, Frederick Burr 7 oppression 10, 36, 40–42, 115, 140, 204, 211, 245 Oravcova, Anna 93 Oroza, Constanza 205 orphanages 91, 93, 99 orphans 7, 11, 20, 23, 26, 29n1, 36–37, 127 Otero, Sole 209n3 otherness 202–203, 208; of sexual identity 208 Otomo, Katsuhiro 8 Oyola, Osvaldo 147n5 Ozaki, Mio 48 P. La mia adolescenza trans 10, 162n4 Paddock, Stephen 236 Padula, Grazia La 162n16 Pagliani, Elena 160 Pahl, Kate 108 pain 12, 46, 65, 110, 112, 120, 121; objects of 107, 119, 120 Palestine 10 pandemic (COVID-19) 74, 171, 199–200, 247 Papel estrujado 62 Parker, Peter see Spider-Man Parks, Gregory S. 7

patriarchal family 74–76; see also patriarchy patriarchy 12, 40, 41–42, 75, 80, 84–85, 201, 204, 207; see also patriarchal family Patrick, Ruth 250 Patterson, Joseph M. 20, 29 Pavan, Sara 163n26, 28, 29 Paying the Land 10 Pazienza, Andrea 162n16 Peel, Emma 131 Peepshow 9 Peeters, Frederik 155 Peinado, Javier 8 Pekar, Harvey 170–171 Pérez del Solar, Pedro 66 Perren, Alisa 133 Perriot, Vicent 191 Perry, George 23 Persepolis 214, 238n6, 243 Perucca, Pedro 201, 206 Pete the Tramp 7 Peterson, Jean 109 Petra (character) 7 Petruccioli, Rita 12, 74, 82–83 Pettinato, Tuono 160 Peyer, Tom 128 photojournalism 13, 224 Picasso, Pablo 82 Pichelli, Sara 162n16 pictogrammatic symbols 46, 51, 53 Piñera, Sebastián 199 Plaza, Patricio 205 Plowman, Lydia 250 poetry 107, 110, 187, 253 Poharec, Lauranne 233 point of view 4, 7, 25, 46, 52, 57, 96–97, 146, 212, 237 Pokorný, Marek 94, 96–98, 100 Polak, Kate 4, 237 police brutality 125, 199; see also violence political cartooning 240, 243 Poole, Geoff 249 Porter, Sylvia 140 Portolano, Cristina 12, 74, 79–82 post-due diligence narratives 236 potency 85 Pound, John 183 poverty 7, 11, 21, 47, 142, 145; see also precarity power 5–6, 10, 21–22, 32, 37, 40–43, 68, 83, 84, 86, 93–94, 96, 100, 103–104, 107–109, 115, 126–128, 131–132, 134, 137, 140–141, 143, 184, 193, 203–204, 207, 211, 224, 228–229, 235, 240, 242–243, 251, 254 Power Man (character) 129–131, 138, 145

Index 267 Power Man & Iron Fist 145, 147n8 Powerpaola 209n3 Prádanos, Luis 70 precariat 2–3, 35, 60, 62–63, 125–126, 130, 134, 240; see also class; cognitariat; precarity precarious lives 7, 8, 13, 40, 73–85; see also precariousness; precarity precariousness 1–6, 8–9, 11, 12, 76; and agency 12; and autobiography 9; Butler’s definition of 1; as common growl 5; emotional 12, 58, 74, 86n3; and everyday life 9, 99; existential 12; gender related 155; and graphic narratives 6–9, 13; as ikizurasa 47–48; and love 76, 86n5; as multifarious phenomenon 11; of others 242; sentimental 76; shared 4, 242; as shared phenomenon 4; social 47, 76; and trauma 99; see also Butler, J.; precarious lives; precarity precarity 1–14, 32, 42, 60, 62, 67, 73–74, 76, 99, 161, 228–230, 245; academic 14, 240–242; activism against 240, 252; in Argentina 7, 13, 173, 175, 199; and autobiography 67, 154–159; as capitalist control 2–3; childhood 31–32, 38, 42; of comics authors 6, 129, 134, 154–161, 165, 167, 173, 175–176; as common growl 5; as discrimination 74; and enthusiasm 3, 174; in everyday life 9, 76; financial 47, 60, 134; in graphic narratives 2, 4, 7–9, 11, 32, 74; and hegemony 205; and humour 9, 175–176; and identity 9, 152–161; and intersectionality 242; in Italy 7, 73–77, 152–161; in Japan 7, 45–58; and labour 62, 154, 240–242; and liquid love 12; material 1; of migrants 10, 173; mythologization of 13; neoliberal 2, 75, 240; and precariousness 1–2, 4, 6, 11, 146; and private life 73–74; queer alliance with 9; social 73, 85; and solidarity 14, 245; superheroic 12, 126–134, 146; and social death 228–230; and women 73–74, 152–161; see also Butler, J.; employment; insecurity; precarious lives; precariousness; precariat; social struggle; underemployment; unemployment prejudice 31, 35, 93, 223 Presswood, Alane 228, 238n1, 238n5 Priest, Christopher 147n8 Private Eye, The 8

privilege 31, 40, 65, 66, 67, 70, 74, 125, 128, 132, 154, 175, 199, 231, 242 protests 5, 8, 14, 67, 144, 178, 185, 192, 199, 205, 249 Prowler, The (character) 138–141, 143–145 publishers 7, 26, 129, 133, 134, 151, 152, 158, 160, 162n7, 163n19, 188, 189–190, 193–194, 203, 209, 243, 244; alternative 152, 160, 206; mainstream 6, 127, 146, 158, 160, 162n5, 205, 244; small presses as 179, 247; see also comics market; self-publishing Puertadeluz 8 Pustz, Matthew J. 145 Putino, Angela 75, 86n4 Pyongyang 243 queer 9, 183, 201, 204, 205, 207, 209, 210, 234 Quino 167 Rabagliati, Michel 179 race 11, 12, 42, 94, 117–118, 120, 134, 140, 153, 163, 174–176, 178, 203–204, 211, 217–218, 220, 223, 232, 245, 255; see also Asian Americans; ethnicity; Hispanic; minorities; Roma racism 7, 93, 119, 125, 137, 142, 144, 146, 204 Rajoy, Mariano 60, 68 Ramos, Humberto 128 Rannou, Maël 190, 192, 195n3 realism 52, 53, 55, 57, 127, 143, 158, 174, 180 Recordà, Aniol 61 refugees 212–213, 221; see also migrants Reid, Stephanie 31 relationality 73–76 Repetti, Massimo 243 reproduction 67, 73, 82, 249 residual disenchantment 60–61, 66 resilience 12, 40, 43, 77 resistance 5–6, 13–14, 27, 40, 68–69, 96, 160, 200, 204, 255 Ress, Stella 23 retrotopia 4, 65; see also Bauman, Z. Reyns-Chikuma, Chris 214 Rheault, Sylvain 103 Richard, Nelly 202 Richardson, Ashley S. 126 Rifkind, Candida 103, 212, 223–224 Rippl, Gabriele 217 Risso, Eduardo 173 Rius 243 Robbins, Trina 201

268  Index Robert, Pascal 162 Robertson, David Alexander 92, 102–103 Rocchi, Silvia 152, 158, 160, 162n11, 163n26 Rodríguez, Javier 128 Rodríguez, “Spain” 8 Rodríguez Zapatero, José Luis 60 Rogers, Steve see Captain America Rolling, James Haywood 104 Roma 12, 91–95, 97–99, 101–104 Romero-Jódar, Andrés 5 Romita, John 138, 144 Roof, Dylann 236 Roosens, Carl 191 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 19, 22–23, 28 Rosa, Isaac 61 Rosales, Jaime 63 Rosenbaum, Roman 10 Rossi, Barbara 163n17 Rossi, Monica 160 Roth, Werner 132 Rowsell, Jennifer 107–108 Russell, Clarence D. 7 Russo, Giovanni 162n10 Rys, Michael 4 Sabaté, Irene 62 Sabsay, Leticia 5, 6 Sacco, Joe 10, 214, 243 Sacks, Jason 133 Saenz Valiente, Juan 173 Safe Area Goražde 10 Sagramola, Giulia 152, 157, 162n8, 162n11, 163n34 Saito, Takao 8 Sanders, Julie 32–33, 35, 37 Sanders, Michael 249 Sandoval, Gerard 133 Sassen, Saskia 202–203 Satrapi, Marjane 9, 214, 238n6 Scanlon, Molly J. 95 Scarpa, Laura 151 Schalkx, Maartje 209n3 Schappes, Morris U. 24 Schoell, William 129 Schrauwen, Olivier 155 Scialdone, Antonello 73 Scomparsa, Roberta 160 Scrivo 151, 163n23 Sears, Anthony 230 Secuencia Disidente 201, 205, 209n6 segregation 94, 139, 144–145, 255 self-edition see self-publishing self-exploitation 3, 6, 133

self-publishing 6, 12, 151–152, 154, 160, 162n2, 162n5, 208, 228, 244, 246, 254; as ethical-political choice 160; groups 160; and identity 161; see also DIY practices; publishers; zines self-representation 6, 8, 146; of cartoonists 165, 168–176; of gifted students 109; see also autobiography Selmi, Giulia 73 Selva, Clara 61 Sereno 206 Seth 170 sex 9, 50, 63, 77, 79, 80, 81, 151, 202, 207, 209 sexism 41, 74, 133, 163n21, 205, 207 sexual dissidence 199–201, 203, 209 sexual identity 2, 9, 10, 13; see also LGBTIQ+; queer Sfar, Joann 155 Shamoon, Deborah 8 Shelton, Gilbert 8 Shifman, Limor 166, 174 Shuster, Joe 7 Siegel, Jerry 7 Signorelli, Josephine Yole see Fumettibrutti Silvestri, Marc 132–133 Singeon 188, 191 Sinthasomphone, Konerak 230 slice-of-life 46, 47, 49, 207; see also autobiography; memoir comics Slott, Dan 128 Smith, Eddie 230 Smith, Kevin 133 Smith, Louseen 160 Smith, Matthew J. 7 Smith, Raymond 230 Snyder, Jonathan 65 Socal, Alice 152, 155, 163n26 social media 154–155, 215, 244, 247, 251; see also Facebook; Instagram; social networks; Tinder social networks 162, 174–175, 199; see also social media social struggle 46, 66, 74, 199–200, 208, 237; see also precarity Solanin 48 solitude 12, 80, 92, 97–99 Somalia 212–213, 218–219, 222 Spagnulo, Giulia see ZUZU Spain 26–28, 58n5, 60–63, 65, 68, 165 Spanish Civil War 26–29 Spider-Man (character) 127–128, 138–139, 141, 146

Index 269 Spiegelman, Art 10, 163n19 Spini, Debora 211, 223 Spottorno, Carlos 10 Staglianò, Riccardo 77 Standing, Guy 2–3, 68, 73, 134 Stein, Daniel 154 Steirer, Gregory 133 Steve Canyon 20 Stewart, Alan 140 Stewart, Cameron 133–134 Steyerl, Hito 210 Stone-Face (character) 143–144 strike comics 240, 243–245, 250–251, 254; see also activism; industrial action; trade unions Stronger Than Some 91, 94–100, 103 Stuck Rubber Baby 10, 230 superheroes 7, 10, 12, 110, 125, 127–131, 133, 137, 141, 145; and community 134; and consumerism 133; as everyday heroes 138; and feminism 130–132; as precariat 9; as teenagers 132–134; see also specific characters Superman (character) 7, 19, 126, 132, 138 Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane 131 Szachowicz-Sempruch, Justyna 75 Szép, Eszter, 5 Szymborska, Wislawa 152, 158 T’Challa see Black Panther Tabachnick, Stephen E. 120 Tabellini, Guido 83 Takano, Fumiko 181 Tamaki, Jillian 155 Tamaki, Mariko 14, 155 tankōbon 45, 49 Tardif, Dominique 194 Tarr, Babs 133–134 Tatsumi, Yoshihiro 8, 58n2 teenagers 62, 67, 127–127, 133–134, 146, 162n1, 228, 234, 236; see also young adults; youth Terry and the Pirates 20 Terzani, Tiziano 158 Tezuka, Osamu 58n2 Thing, the (character) 127, 138 Thirault, Philippe 62 Thomas, David 230 Thomas, Dominic 223 Thomas, P. L. 146 Thompson, Craig 155 Ti chiamo domani 82 Tinder 79–80 Tisdell, Elizabeth J. 109

Tithecott 227, 238n3, 238n4 Toffolo, Davide 155, 163n17 Tomine, Adrian 155 Tosti, Andrea 151, 157, 163n19, 163n23 trade unions 14, 22, 240, 242; see also activism; industrial action; strike comics; University and College Union (UCU) Trahan, Sébastien 186, 194 Tramutoli, Margherita 162 trauma 6, 8, 12, 34, 92, 95–97, 99–102, 214, 222, 255; see also childhood Troemel, Brad 174–175 Trujillo, Marcela “Maliki” 10 Tudela, Enrique 66 Tuomi, Steven 23 Turgeon, David 186 Turner, Matt 230 Turner, Victor 65 Tursilli, Antonio 73 Tuska, George 129–130, 147 Uberti, Mir 208 UK Higher Education (HE) 240, 242, 244–245 Uncanny X-Men, The 132 Uncertain Homes 91–94, 103–104 uncertainty 2, 3, 12, 47, 65, 129 underemployment 1, 2; see also employment; precarity; unemployment underground comix 8–9 unemployment 22, 25, 46, 50, 60, 62–63, 139, 140, 242; see also employment; precarity; underemployment United States 2, 8, 11–12, 19, 22, 24, 28, 58n5, 108, 110, 127, 131, 138–139, 145, 147n7, 178, 191, 203 University and College Union (UCU) 240, 242, 244–247, 249–251, 253, 254; see also trade unions Upáta 160 utopia 4, 65, 255 Valagussa, Cecilia 157–158 Valero O’Connell, Rosemary 14 Vallejos, Soledad 200 Valtorta, Luca 162n6, 163n20 Vance, Carole S. 75 Varillas, Rubén 6, 215, 218 Varrella, Simona 223 Vaughan, Brian K. 8 Vázquez-Montalbán, Manuel 66 Vecchio, Luciano 173 Veci Carratello, Veronica 162n11

270  Index Vélez, Anabel 132 Venable, Colleen AF 14 Ventura, Raffaele Alberto 77 Verdier, Ed 23 victims 34, 67, 127, 141, 227, 229, 230, 231, 234; and evacuation of humanity 229; ungrievable 229–230, 237 Vilarós, María 66 Vinci, Vanna 163n17 violence 1–2, 9, 12, 32, 34, 38, 48, 50, 65, 83, 84, 142, 203–204, 228, 231, 236, 237; in Czech orphanages 94; and femicides 200, 205, 207; gender-based 41, 48, 55, 86n2, 112, 199, 201, 230; against LGBTIQ+ community 199, 201, 204–207; sexual 13, 229–230; state 199; systemic 1, 2–3; and transfemicides 200; victims of 229, 237; of war 10; see also migrants; police brutality visibility 13, 14, 69, 140, 155, 199, 205, 208, 228, 230 Vittori, Ariel 160 Vivacqua, Laura 160 voice 5, 6, 9, 11, 13, 25, 32, 38, 43, 66, 77, 107, 116, 121, 153, 187–188, 209, 212, 215, 217, 222–224, 228, 256 Vollenweider, Nacha 10, 207 vulnerability 1–2, 4, 5, 11, 12, 32, 60, 92, 99, 222, 228; bodily 5; of brown subjects 236; children’s 11, 32, 42, 92, 99–100; comics authors’ 10; Dahmer’s 234, 237; existential 92; and LGBTIQ+ narratives 10; of gay subjects 236; as public enmity 35; and resistance 5–6, 13; shared 5, 14; and sexual identity 10; and visual composition 98–99; see also precariousness; violence Waberi, Abdourahman 224 Waid, Mark 128 Walden, Tillie 10 Walker, David 145 Walker, Mort 51 Wanzo, Rebecca 137, 139 Warley, Linda 103 webcomics 110, 154, 184, 195, 253 Weinberger, Jeremiah 230 Weiss, Alan L. 144–145 West, Sarah 250 Whitlock, Gillian 6, 10 Wiggins, Bradley E. 166–167, 174 Wilde, Lukas R.A. 46, 51 Williams, J.P. 131

Williams, Riri see Ironheart Williams, Rosalind 60, 202 Willumsen, Connor 191 Wilson, Sam see Falcon, the Wilson, Willow G. 134 witchcraft 35, 41, 161 Witches, The 11, 31–42 Witt, Emily 76 Wolverine (character) 130, 132–133 women cartoonists 9, 12, 41, 74, 76, 151–152, 155, 160–161, 163n21, 200; see also fumettiste; specific names Wonder Woman (character) 126, 131 Woolhouse, Clare 250 workplace 47, 245, 253 workshops 13, 173, 176, 178, 185–187, 191–192, 194, 200 World War II 23, 126, 127, 138 Wright, Bradford W. 130 X-Men, The (characters) 7 Yanow, Sophie 181–182, 191 Yazawa, Ai 155 young adults 8, 58n3, 67, 93, 99, 134; see also youth youth 1, 2, 9, 11, 12, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 31, 48, 57, 77, 108, 127, 139, 141, 143, 146, 147n6, 211, 227, 228, 230–232, 236, 245; and belonging 234; as consumers of comics 138; as consumers of mainstream narratives 209; as consumers of Marvel Cinematic Universe 126; in crisis 4, 26, 120, 227–228; disillusionment of 11; lost generation (in Japan) 46–47; lost generation (in Spain) 60–63; minority 12, 231; murdered 237; wasted 227, 234; see also millennials; young adults YouTube 215, 217–218 Zafra, Remedios 3 Zerocalcare 9, 151, 157, 160, 162n2, 162n8 zines 6, 9, 45, 49, 50, 59, 155, 160, 167, 173, 179, 188–190, 199–200, 202, 205, 249, 253; see also DIY practices; self-publishing Zipes, Jack 40 Zipi y Zape (characters) 7 Žižek, Slavoj 2 ZUZU 152, 157, 162n3 Zviane 180, 182, 185